The Final Vibe Coding Assignment

Hello and welcome to the first Cast flagship podcast of the Vercesel Rest API I'm your friend David Peerce, and today on the show, we have a challenge The way this is going to work,'re we're going to do a bunch of these in a row, but the way this is going to work is we've gathered a bunch of people We're going to give them all a challenge and then we are going to go off for several weeks and report back on what we found. Today, we are starting with two of my colleagues, Jake Kasternakis and Hayden Field, and we are going to do a vibe coding challenge. The first thing we're gonna do is kind of lay the land, talk about where we all are in our vibe coding experiences And then we're gonna all go see Who can do the best In y coding. It's a lot of fun. I'm very excited about this project in part because it's going get me to actually get some work done for a change for the podcast. It's gonna be awesome. But first, here's everything else happening on the verge today This is N seconds on the verge for Monday, june twenty ninth, twenty twenty six Mythos is back kindind of The anthropic model that was once deemed too dangerous to release publicly and actually threw even more chaos into the already chaotic relationship between anthropic and the US government is now being released to a Trump administration approved list of organizations who those organizations are, who they will be, whether you'll ever get to use Fable fiveive again hard to say. Nobody seems to quite understand the AI regulatory environment right now. And given that the Supreme Court also ruled today that President Trump has the authority to fire two FCC commissioners, which changes the way that agencies work, whatever happens here, it will start with the White House Meanwhile, Comcast is splitting into two companies in the latest of a seemingly endless supply of media, mergers, and unmergers Now there will be Comcast, the Internet cable and mobile carrier, and there will be NBC Universal, which is the studios' theme parks and streaming networks, including Peacock None of this, by the way, applies to Verscent, which Comcast spun off in twenty twenty The Media business just continues to be chaos. And a fun side note of this, by the way, is that I have a new disclosure to do here. I guess it's going to be something like Comcast is an investor in PMX, the parent company of the Verge I'm going have to get used to that And finally, quick PSA for you. WhatsApp is rolling out username support later this year so that you can find people and be found without having to share phone numbers. The feature's not live yet, but you might be able to go to setettings account username and reserve yours. There are like three billion people on WhatsApp, so you should probably move fast. You can read more about all of this at the verge d. com dot is ninety seconds on the verge Monday, june twenty ninth Now it is time for some vibe coating shenanigans Joining me now, the Virges Senior AI reporter Haydfield, Hi Hayden. Hey, And the Verge is E executive editor, Jake Kasrnakis. it's Chief shenanig's reporter than. Chief Shanigan's reporter What I want to do here is something that you guys actually did a little bit of while I was on parental leave last year which is just all simultaneously attempt to go on a technology adventure together You guys all did vibe coding projects last year and I listened to that episode of the Virgecast with like sheer rage because none of you tried hard enough and you all gave up too fast and we're going to do some new stuff. So I have assembled the three of us and the way that this is going to work is At the end of this episode, I'm going to give all three of us a task. And it is largely a vibe coding based task And we are going to regroup in a month and just share what we have done on that task. You will be relentlessly shamed for not doing a good job or trying hard enough you will But the world is your oyster So we're going to get to the task at the end But what we were gonna to do is a task ahead of this. The first assignment I gave both of you was basically like Go vibe code something that you have made that is useful and interesting in your daily life. And you both were kind of like, we've done this already. So we're gonna start our experience with some show and tell Jake, I want you to go first and tell us a little bit about your vibe coding setup and some of the stuff that you've built Yeah. I mean, I feel like what I should actually start with is the failures. Okay, which is it It's it turns out so when we did this last year Vvbe coding as somebody who has no coding knowledge It wasn't there. like it didn't work. L we tried stuff and it was constantly flopping. Yeah. And then when I checked back in again, you know, this winter Oh it had changed a lot. You know,es. And so The thing you will find if you start experimentents with vibe codating is like you're gonna to make a lot of stuff that in the moment, you're like this is amazing. And then you use it and you're like, I have no use for this. L this is total garbage Um So I made a bunch of tools that I thought would be useful for work, differenterent kinds of news digests, different kinds of things that would pull together Twitter feeds, things that would I just one time I told Claude, I was like, hey Find every single you know, open U. S government database that is relevant to the erge and you know pull all of the files that are relevant to companies we cover and then just like do some analysis on them. And it was just like, cool, let me just go get the API for like the treasury. And it just like did it and it built it. And then I had all this data and I was like, there's nothing, I don't know what to do with this And so it's gotten there. Like the technology has advanced a lot, but I think the thing that I found is that findinding an idea that is useful to you specifically is harder than building it now, which is nice. This is I mean, this is like increasingly supported by the data, by the way, right? that like You look out into the vibe coding world and everybody is building tons of stuff that amounts to nothing. And this is becoming like an enterprise crisis because everybody's like, we're using all these tokens for nothing. What is the point of any of this money that we're spending So you've encountered the same problem that every Fortune five hundred company is shout in spades right now Except I only paid like twenty dollars a month. so it was not so bad Eventually I did strike something though, right? so I found a small focused problem I have at work which is that I have a lot of meetings with people on our team every single week, right and byy the time the next week rolls around, I have forgotten everything we talked about And that's because like I I've tried a million different systems for taking notes for these meetings. and every single time it's just like I don't read my old notes back They're kind of a mess. They're in different places. I like had just like a long running text edit dock. L it's not good U And so I kind of thought like, oh wait, what if I have a notes app that is specifically for meetings with Our team And I can list everybody's names and I will have it automatically roll forward every single new entry with the action items from our last meeting And I can have it automatically summarize, you know the past few weeks of notes. And so now when I go to have one of these meetings each week, I'm like super prepared because it's giving me like a brief on what we've been talking about. I have the action items that I'm supposed to be coming in with. And this has been great for me. And so like this was the first thing I built that was really, really successful. Okay, wit can you just pause for one second? Yeah Hayden, I want to know how that description makes you feel I once described a vibe coding project to Neili and he told me that it sounded like I was describing a dream to him. and that has hurt my feelings ever since he said that Hm I want to know like does Jake's description of what He Vibe coulded do anything for you Yeah, I mean, I don't know, with five cating, I feel like the simpler the better. like it's usually solving a problem that like is really easy, but you just can't it together. That's how mine was, at least what I like built. And so This sounds similar. It's like, yeah, he could You know, take the notes and look back at them, but he's not. So he's like figuring out a small tiny fix that's going to make him look So I feel like, yeah, I mean, it seems like simple enough to work, in my opinion. like you gave us the prompt of the toothbrush test, like something you're going to use twice a day. and that's what I kept thinking about. So it's like this seems to pass that. you know, I feel like people try to like go too crazy with it and then they just, like we were talking about It just flops and like they never use it again. So I like feature creep problem is so real in vibecing because you're like, I can do anything. Maybe I'll just do everything and it just all falls completely on its face. Yeah, I know exactly what Ni is saying though because They it You know, as a piece of software, like it's I think it's pretty polished, right? I could share it around. other people could use it this doing this has maybe like appreciate people who actually make software so much more because this thing is precisely designed to solve my problems. It doesn't make sense for anybody else. It is specifically tuned to my workflow and I don't suddenly I'm like, how do you if I if I'm passionate am I going and I'm going to make a notes app like How do I know it's a something thing other people want? Like how do I know that it's an interesting idea? Beause we see right we cover this stuff all the time. David, like you've written about nine million to do apps. And each of them has like an interesting, marketable idea. like I don't I don't know what that is for my app But it doesn't matter because it's only for me, but that's why it's so pitch this to somebody Jake, one more question for you before we get to Hayden's project What is broken about the app that you made yourself I mean, this app is like really simple. It's it's Basically just a saafari web view with some notes I have I hate to tell you like I haven't found it yet. Though I have like out of paranoia Once a week, I ask Claude to review it and be like, hey, make sure the data isn't going to fall apart Make sure it's not going to delete all my notes. L makeake sure I'm not going to lose everything. Can I canan I just make a quick suggestion? Just go back to Claude and say, hey, can we back all of this up as text files? J Just do that for me and it'll make me feel better You're going to end up with like a webcache problem that is just everything's going to fall apart If it starts with local host calling three thousand, you've made mistakes That's my other vibe coding app Do resves about that real fast Well I made an entire email client . Oh my God I can't wait to hear about this. This is my dream. this is Dude, Okaykay, so like I've had the same email address for like overver ten years Yeah. and it's been public the entire time And so I get so much garbage And so I was like, okay, how can I figure this out? How can I create an experience where I don't have to deal with a million emails at once And the answer is just labels. like it's just Gmail labels Gema labels are like on the st They're like hidden in the corner It was like not like a fast way to access them. And I was like, oh, you know what would be perfect. You know how Gmail has like the big taps up top for like promotions and whatever I was like, oh, what if I just put my labels up there? That would like solve my exact problem. GMmail doesn't let you do that. You can't choose what goes up there. So I was like, okay, I'll just build an entire app that puts my labels up there. And it's great and it makes it super easy for me to like triage my emails because it like It shows me all the stuff that's from like you guys, my corkers. It has stuff from like known, trusted conteacts who I want to hear from. It has a tab for like literally like five thousand plus unread newsletters. It's great. I love it. You basically built yourself like suucky superhuman, which people pay thirty dollars a month for. Like that's it's kind of great S some PM Gmail is listening to this is and is going get a promotion by going and launching what you just described as a new version of Gail. I would really appreciate it. But yeah, but it's also like I had to like enable a bunch of weird Gmail API things. Every single time I did something, I was just I would be like Flauded Please do not. accidentally send emails to my entire contact list.. Like like it's a little scary. Like I would rather kind of not do that. Like a local notes app, like the worst thing that happens is that I go into a meeting with you David and I forget what we talked about last week. L it's fine. This one, the worst thing that happens is that I accidentally like spam every single person You hack your own email But to your local host thing, it's like for some reason that I haven't quite felt like dealing with I had have to log in once a week and then the loggin involves me going back into my browser and there's this local host thing and I just Yeah Yeah it's fine. this is the kind of stuff that I really get a kick out of because my own experience, which we'll get to in a minute is Built a bunch software has a bunch of bugs that I would find completely reprehensible in anybody else's software. Yeah. But in mine I'm like, ye, that's fine. I can do with this. I don't know how to fix it anyway U Hayden, let's get to you. Have you Have you been vibecoding? What have you built for yourself? Yes, okay, so I have been vibecoding. what I made was a habit tracker, which I know everyone makes, but for me, I have ADD and so I really desperately need one. Like I've learned about myself that I can't like start a new habit without accountability basically. You know, it takes like six weeks, three to six weeks of me having accountability with someone else or with like inanimate object, whatever, I have a tracker. I need to have some sort of accountability for like three to six weeks and then I'm set I'm in it, I don't need the accountability anymore. But it is very tough for me to start a new habit. So every time I join a new gym, like I make five gym friends, I'm like, I gott to really lock in here, you know, because I'm not going do something just for myself. I have to just not disappoint someone else or not get a star on my habit tracker or whatever. That is gonna make me do the thing, not just the long term knowledge that I'll be healthy or something. Totally. So at least in the beginning. So basically I used to download all these different habit tracker apps like you guys werere talking about with to do list apps and you know, note taking apps. And so I've tried like every Hbit tracker app. There's always something that bothers me about it or it's really expensive. I even downloaded this one that I loved for a while called Habit But the problems with it were that you couldn't create a habit that wasn't every day For example, I need to take my iron supplement every other day and it's something that I'm always going to forget because you have to do it on an empty stomach at night. and you have to take over your vitamin C. So it's just like for an ADD person, that's just too many details to recall on the fly. And so yeah, or I don't want to work out every single day But I also don't want to be like shamed for not working out every day. And if I see it on the thing and it's like workout and then I don't check it off I will feel shame even if it's not a big deal. I just, you know, I have to feel like I'm succeeding in order to have motivation basically. That's how I work. And so what I made was a habit tracker app that has like a section for daily habits. It's extremely simple. It's like rectangles that each have a color. And then when you swipe across habit to mark you completed it, it becomes a deeper color and stars rain down. So you get a reward, you get a gold star. Is this like a native mobile app you made yourself? Yeah, I made a web app and then I made a native mobile app. So I will say J Hayden's already winning. by making a native mobile app ay Hayden wins this round of the Vibe Coding Olympics. I will say though that it was really hard to build the native mobile app. Like it took a lot of time and it kept breaking and I tried I did it I did both of these things, both the web app and the mobile app. I tried both codex and Coud code. And I compared and contrasted and I had an interesting experience with both. But anyway, yeah, so it also has a section for three to four times a week, which is like working out and create a project or some sort, because I'm starting to try to learn how to embroider and stuff like that. And then only every other day does it pop up to say like, oh, take your iron and that's another habit that appears. So basically I made it perfectly for myself. And I think this is actually something that other people would want to use But I will say you guys, it said that I had like fifteen high security vulnerabilities and fifteen medium security vulnerabilities Yeah. So I'm not a developer, so I don't know what they are, but it seems like, you know, it could be dangerous for people who don't know what they're doing to like be using this to like deploy apps onto the open internet. So my favorite thing is you go through these things and you say like, oh, Xcode is telling me I have all these problems. and Clog Code is just like,ah, don't worry about it. Yeah probably nothing. Are we sure it's nothing? I literally asked them Codex like is this a problem? I was like, Oh, don't worry about those. That's what it said. I was like, okay. So yeah, I mean It works on my phone now Um as long as I'm connected to the same wife. So, you know, I mean, I would like it to work all. It seems to it hasn't broken yet, but I just You know, it works so far. It's going well U And, you know, it has made me more likely to do my my new habits, which is great. So that's really that's really impressive. I do think that's a fun one because That is the sort of thing that I can absolutely see how you're like, oh, other people would be like this too. Whereas like there's some things like Jake, the first thing you described in particular is like This is very specifically for me and my thing. But then It's very easy to be like, well, lots of people have running one on ones at at their work. Maybe other people will want this too. And then it's like, I think an easy trap I've seen a lot of people fall into is you're like, okay, well what would other people want? And then you've accidentally builds an app you don't want anymore. Whereas I feel like Hayden, everything you just said to me was like, oh, this is very cool. That's something I would use too. And then you're like, oh and stars come down and I'm like, I would turn off the stars. don I don't want the stars. Get the stars out of my face. You can adjust those. So you have an adjustment for the stars, even though you like the stars Well, I did originally, and then I was like, no, I'm just gonna keep them. so I love them. At first it was like it was trying to be too elegant. It was like a quick sparkle. And I was like, no, this needs to be like a reward function. You need to make them more intense than then it did. For just to winstar That's really good I'm Mine and I've talked about a bunch already on this show and on the website Basically, I built myself I've built two things now that I use every day. the first one is just basically a way to see my calendar and my to do list in one place. which is shockingly hard to do in a way that is not like hideously ugly Um Yes offense to every app that does this already. I know there are lots of you and I've tried them all and they're all bad in your own special way. I just now have like a running list of the events that I have for today and the tasks that I have for today. And all the events are synced to Google Calendar and all the tasks are synced to do list, which is what I use for my to do list. But I can just see them and add to them all from one place. and that has been like life changingly great. It exists on my phone, it's just thing I open to see what's going on today other one which I just built yesterday and is working very well for me is Uh Constantly have seven hundred thousand tabs open. And I discovered the problem is that I don't I need to put my tabs somewhere. Some of them are like, oh, this is going to be a story. Some of them are like, this this is going to be a thing that I'm going to put in installer newsletter. Some of them are like, this, I just need to come back to you later And I have I built a web cllipper that is just a filing system. So I click the thing and then I click where it goes and it just sends the link to the right place. And I don't have to think about it anymore. And I am using the least RAM on my computer that I have used ever in history. It's this tiny little piece of software. It like barely works. For anybody starting with vibe coding, by the way, I really recommend starting with browser extensions. because they're very simple to make They're really easy to load You can obviously do lots of like security disaster things, but like the There are few horrible ways for it to go wrong when you're just trying to like do a simple thing with a web page on your computer Highly recommend messing around with Chrome extensions to solve some of your browser problems The email client you described, Jake, all of a sudden like has my brain spinning I'm like this is the thing that I want. I have gone back into a bunch of the supposedly useful AI email clients recently My inbox is the most out of control it's ever been. I don't know how you are as email people, but like I was inbox zero person for a long time. I've like seven hundred unread emails right now and it's stressing me out. You know how I am You're a meaning, Yeah, You're a psychopath when it comes to email we don't talk about that F But I think like I feel like we've all We've done a pretty good job here of solving a very specific problem for ourselves, which is good. U Oh wait, can I say the thing that's broken about mine, which I think is very funny I set up a bunch of keyboard short cs so that I can like navigate around my little daily planner app there are three tabs and I can type one, two and three. to switch between them, I can takepe Command T to have a new or a new task This app for some reason, captures all of the keyboard shortcuts on my device. So I can't open a new browser tab inside of while I'm looking at this planner app because command T, it takes to me mean in a new tab when I just want it to be T I cannot make Cloud could fix this This is where I'm like any person who is a remotely functional developer would know how to fix this I do not So I am like every keyboard shortcut on my computer ceases to exist whenever I have this app open And it drives me insane But I don't know, That seems unusable It's not, but I just have to go over and click a new tab button and the goes back and it's fine. As long as I switch tabs with the mouse, we survive. But anything once when I'm in the app, it refuses to acknowledge that anything else exists.es me it' a very normal vi coding problem Yeah. this is was delightful and terrible about these things. It's just like, oh, but everything else is so perfect for me. like I will deal with this incredibly major inconvenience. Yeah Have you guys used anybody else's vibe coding stuff yet? And obviously it's hard to know to some extent, right? But I mean, like, have you seen anything else somebody just like made on GitHub? and been like, oh, I'll take that for myself No, I haven't. Would you? Does that feel risky? I don't know. I mean, after building my own and seeing all my security vulnerabilities, I'm like, yeah, I don't know if I would. I mean, feel I feel like I would just rather make it myself. especially because I don't know. when when I was comparing and also like comparing with Cloud code versus Codex, there were like thirty security vulnerabilities on both. And I feel like anyone else vibe coding would be like me and just be like, oh, it's no big deal. So yeah, I don't know. But I think I would get ideas from it The thing that I'm really curious about is if when I was doing this email client, I was like, oh Why don't I just like start from an open source project and then That will be like a really sturdy center and then I can just c like I can cut it down and build it back up to what I need to be Um And like my dream is that like as this stuff becomes more and more common People just buildite a core to a notes app a core to an email app Cour with to do app And that stuff, I don't if it does exist, like I'm not good at finding it and figuring out how to build off of it. And also some of these things that are so simple. But yeah, I think like If it's something like that where I'm like, this is a known, trusted entity, a community project, like yeah, absolutely like open to using it. But some of the stuff like I'm more likely to like be inspired and then do my own thing than be like I mean, there's the thing, like They're dreams. they're very specific to you. And so it's like, I don't know if I really would use somebody else's thing Yeah, I went when I was building this little web cllipper thing for myself Mh I said There's this thing called Marky that is just like a neat little tiny text utility for Mac that somebody I think vibe coded and put on GitHub U. And I put that into Cogd code as like design inspo that I was like, this is what I want this to look like, basically, veryy simple and straightforward looked like that, and Cloud code was like, oh I like Marquee a lot. Great job, and I like Okay, sure, sureure clock good But, I have not yet figured out my own tolerance for this stuff. because I think even if you assume that most people are doing this stuff with good intentions and not malicious intentions, which I think is true Certainly people will have malicious intentions But like you said, hidden, even the people with the good intentions. might screw this up, which is one of the reasons I have been reluctant to share any of the stuff that doing with people. I even got some feedback from people who were like, I like the way that looks W you share the thing with me and I'm like, I don't really know how to do that and B No. because because I don't know what's going to happen to either of us if I do that. And it feels like To your point about last year, this question of like How do I even stand up any of this stuff We've sort of solved that in a way, right? Like the ability to get a thing up and running for yourself is much, much, much easier now likeike Hayden, you and I have figured out X code. If we can figure out X code, people can do it. That's for sure. The next phase we have not figured out is like how to make these things safer and sh and more shareable and more sort of durable out in the world, that doesn't feel like anybody has figured it out yet. and that it's also interesting. like you're talking about how you would customize Hayden's thing. As soon as you go to share something, it's like, oh, I have to clean up this like wacky settings toing that everything is just like hard coded to what I need it to be Right? Like if it was an actual app, I would have to ode, the ability to make custom tabs, the ability to like rearrange things like It's funny because it's like Literally a machine does it for you. It's as lazy as it gets. but like I don't want to babysit that. L there's like you still have to do some like you have to do a lot of troubleshooting, particularly for bigger projects. Like the notes app that I made took like thirty seconds. The email app took like A weekend Um, which is is again, all things considered not very long, but like It was it was annoying and it's like I don't w to go deal with that and potentially ruin my app in the process Yeah, Yeah I great that. the phone app or turning it into a phone app was what took me the longest. And then I was like testing both the web I made the web app and the phone app each with Codex and Cloud code. and it was interesting because Open AI, like Kodex had better taste But it was extremely confusing. Like I kept having to ask, what do I do now? or what does that mean? constantly I never made it to the phone app at first either because it messed up on the app version setup and it like didn't set up for a compatible exoo version Um So and it shows like a two new animation package for the stars, things like that. Whereas Cloud code was betteret at building web previews and really easy to understand and just better at solving problems I couldn't conceptualize on my own. Like I honestly didn't know how to conceptualize the three to four times a week thing. I was like, yeah, I need this, but I don't really know how it will show up and not make me feel bad. And it was like, o, why don't we do it like this? And it was right. So I was impressed with code more, but I will say It was I don't know. it was not it didn't have great taste without hand holding. likeike the one it made at first was functional but extremely ugly, whereas CodeXcess was like beautiful. So I had to do a lot of hand holding to change the design. but I mean, the functionality was better at first. so that was interesting. That is really interesting. Cld Code has a very U let's say, unsophisticated design sense by default. Okay, we should get of here, but Before we go, let me give you your task. and as a reminder You have four weeks. give or take to pull this off. and then we're going we're going to regroup In four weeks And we're going to see how everybody did and there are going to be prizes at the end for who did the best And if stars rained down. stars will rain down upon you If you win Here is the task The task is to vibe code a website for something going on in your life U hidden You're getting married is a thing that's going to happen. Would you like to vic code yourself a wedding website, knock yourself out? U my I already know what mine is going to be, which is I will just spoil it for you now. I'm going to go vbe code myself a away to share photos of my kids with my family without having to either like create a private Instagram page or J try to like teach everybody how Google Photos works I don't know how any of that's going to work or what I'm going to do, but I have a month to attempt to figure that out. The prompt is very broad You just have to build a personal website for something going on in your life. Are we being judged on security flaws Let's stay with you can safely assume this is just for you and if it is designed for someone else, fine. Like I'm going to have to make a version of my thing that is accessible and useful to my parents But this will not be for public consumption U Whatever extent that makes you feel better about leaving the security warnings untouched, U But you will not be judged on the relative security of your website, at least not yet All right, I'm excited. If you have tips for us If you have thoughts about what we should do, um We are all vastly in over our heads on all of this. We're all being very vulnerable on this podcast as we go through this stuff So help us out Virge cast of the Vverge dot com call the hotline eight six verge one one Jakeen Hayden, thank you for doing this with me. And as always, the best thing you can do to support everything that we're up to here at the Verge is to subscribe to the Verge Vvergge. com slash, subscribe. It gets you access to all of our podcasts ad free, including this one. It gets you all of our exclusive newsletters. It gets you some big stories. I've been writing about vibe coding, all of the other stuff. Jen Tuy like vibe coded her smart house. That was awesome. We have lots of great coverage. You can get all of it to Vverge. com slash, subscribe. Thank you in advance. The Vge cast is Vverge production and part of the Box Media podcast network. The show is produced by Josh Kahh Has, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Laruck, and Eron Loccasio.'ll you tomorrow Rucking