Our vibe coded projects that actually work

0:02Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, flagship podcast of the Vercel REST API. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show we have a challenge. The way this is going to work, 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 Kastrenakes and Hayden Field and we are going to do a vibe coding challenge. The first thing we're going to do is kind of lay the land, talk about where we all are in our vibe coding experiences, and then we're going to all go see who can do the best in vibe coding.

0:37It's a lot of fun. I'm very excited about this project, in part because it's going to get me to, like, actually get some work done for a change for the podcast. It's going to be awesome. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, June 29th, 2026. Mythos is back, kind 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 U.S. government is now being released to a Trump administration approved list of organizations.

1:07Who those organizations are, who they will be, whether you'll ever get to use Fable 5 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 NBCUniversal, which is the studios, theme parks, and streaming networks, including Peacock.

1:43None of this, by the way, applies to Versant, which Comcast spun off in 2024. 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 to have to get used to that one. 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 is not live yet, but you might be able to go to settings, account, username and reserve yours.

2:16There are like 3 billion people on WhatsApp, so you should probably move fast. You can read more about all of this at TheVerge.com. That is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, June 29th. Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control.

2:52To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. We all do it. You have a night for yourself, but don't like the sound of the silence. So you turn on the TV just for the ambience. It's a little trick that helps you feel like you've got company and aren't alone. And other insurers, well, they may make you feel alone. But when you switch to Geico, you've got claims reps available around the clock. So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help. And let's turn on the washing machine, just for good measure. Well, isn't that soothing? It feels good to have support. It feels good to Geico.

3:30All right. Now it is time for some vibe coding shenanigans. Joining me now, The Verge's senior AI reporter, Hayden Field. Hi, Hayden. Hey. And The Verge's executive editor, Jake Kastronakis. It's chief shenanigans reporter. Chief shenanigans 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 Vergecast with sheer rage because none of you tried hard enough and you all gave up too fast.

4:06And 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 going 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.

4:47And you both were kind of like, we've done this already. So we're going to start our experience with some show and tell. And 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, which is, it turns out, so when we did this last year, vibe coding as somebody who has no coding knowledge, it wasn't there like it didn't work like we tried stuff and it was constantly flopping yeah and then when i checked back in again uh you know this winter oh it had changed a lot i you know and and so the thing you will find if you start experimenting with vibe coding is like you're gonna make a lot of stuff that in the moment you're like this i'm cooking like this this is amazing and then you use it and you're like i have no use for this like this is total garbage so I made a bunch of tools that I thought would be useful for work different kinds of news digests different kinds of things that would you know 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.

6:05government database that is relevant to The Verge 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, like, 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 finding 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?

6:44That 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 500 company is happening in spades right now. Except I only paid like$20 a month. So it was not so bad. Eventually it did strike something though, right? I do, 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?

7:22And by the time the next week rolls around, I have forgotten everything we talked about. And that's because like 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 had just like a long-running text edit doc. Like, it's not good. 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.

8:01And I can have it automatically summarize 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, this was the first thing I built that was really, really successful. Okay, wait, 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 Neelai, and he told me that it sounded like I was describing a dream to him.

8:34And that has hurt my feelings ever since he said that. I want to know, like, does Jake's description of what he vibe coded do anything for you? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. With vibe coding, I feel like the simpler, the better. Like, it's usually solving a problem that, like, is really easy, but you just can't get it together. that's how mine was at least what I like built and so this seems 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 You know, I feel like people try to like go too crazy with it.

9:20And then they just like we were talking about, it just flops and like they never use it again. So I like the feature problem is so real in VibeCoding because you're like, I can do anything. Maybe I'll just do everything. And it just all falls completely on its face. I know exactly what Eli is saying, though, because 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. But doing this has made me appreciate people who actually make software so much more because this thing is precisely designed to solve my problems.

9:58And it doesn't make sense for anybody else. It is specifically tuned to my workflow. And suddenly I'm like, if I'm passionate and I'm going to make a notes app, how do I know it's a thing other people want? How do I know that it's an interesting idea? Because we cover this stuff all the time. David, you've written about 9 million to-do apps. And each of them has an interesting, marketable idea. And 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... It's like, I can't pitch this to somebody. Jake, one more question for you before we get to Hayden's project.

10:36What is broken about the app that you made yourself? I mean, this app is really simple. it's it's basically just a safari web view with some notes that i have i i hate to tell you like i haven't found it yet though i have like out of paranoia like 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 like make sure i'm not going to lose everything can i can i just make a quick suggestion just go back to claude and say hey can we back all this up as text files just just do that for me and it'll make me feel better all right i'll look into it you're you're going to end up with like a web cache problem that is just everything's going to fall apart.

11:14If it starts with localhost colon 3000, you've made mistakes. That's my other Vibe coding app. Do you want to tell us 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, okay, so like, I've had this same email address for like, over 10 years yeah and it's been public the entire time and so i get so much garbage and so i 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 but gmail labels are like on this they're like hidden in the corner it's 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.

12:13I was like, oh, what if I just put my labels up there? That would like solve my exact problem. Gmail 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 shows me all the stuff that's from like you guys, my coworkers. It has stuff from like known trusted contacts who I want to hear from. It has a tab for like literally like 5 ,000 plus unread newsletters. It's great. I love it. You basically built yourself like sucky superhuman, which people pay$30 a month for.

12:52It's kind of great. Some PM at Gmail is listening to this and is going to get a promotion by going and launching what you just described as a new version of Gmail. 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 would be like, Claude, please do not accidentally send emails to my entire contact list. It's a little scary. I would rather kind of not do that. A local notes app, the worst thing that happens is that I go into a meeting with you, David, and I forget what we talked about last week. It's fine.

13:28This one, the worst thing that happens is that I accidentally spam every single person who I ever talked to. 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 have to log in once a week. And then the login involves me going back into my browser and there's this local host thing. And I just, 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 I have built a bunch of software that has a bunch of bugs that I would find completely reprehensible in anybody else's software.

14:01But in mine, I'm like, yeah, it's fine. I can deal with this. I don't know how to fix it anyway. Hayden, let's get to you. Have you been vibe coding? What have you built for yourself? Yes. Okay. So I have been vibe coding. 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 a inanimate object, whatever. I have a tracker.

14:37I 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 got to really lock in here, you know, because I'm not going to 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 going to 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 were talking about with to-do list apps and, you know, note-taking apps.

15:14And so I've tried like every habit 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. Like, 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 it with 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.

15:46but 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 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 the 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.

16:22Is 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... Just so you know, Jake, Hayden's already winning. Just by making a native mobile app, 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, 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 Cloud 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.

17:09because I'm starting to try to like 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 15 high security vulnerabilities and 15 medium security vulnerabilities. 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.

17:43So my favorite thing is you go through these things and you say like, oh, Xcode is telling me I have all these problems. And Cloud Code is just like, yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah, exactly. It's probably nothing. But aren't we sure it's nothing? I literally asked Codex, like, is this a problem? It was like, oh, don't worry about those. That's what it said. I was like, okay. So yeah, I mean, And it works on my phone now 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.

18:18And, 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 are 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 their, 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?

18:53And then you've accidentally built an app you don't want anymore. Whereas I feel like Hayden, the, the, 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, when stars come down and I'm like, I would turn off the stars. 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 going to keep them. So I left them. At first it was like, it was trying to be too elegant. It was like a quick sparkle.

19:21And I was like, no, this needs to be like a reward function. You need to make them more intense. And then it did. I want this to rain stars. that's really good um mine i've talked about a bunch already on on this show and on the website um but basically i built myself i've built two things now that i use every day uh the first one is just a 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 you're all bad in your own special way.

20:00But I can 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 Todoist, 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 the thing I open to see what's going on today. The other one, which I just built yesterday and is working very well for me is I constantly have 700 ,000 tabs open. And I discovered the problem is that I don't, I need to put my tabs somewhere.

20:37Some of them are like, oh, this is going to be a story. Some of them are like, this is going to be a thing that I'm going to put in the installer newsletter. Some of them are like, this I just need to come back to later. And I have, I built a web clipper 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.

21:08They're really easy to load. You can obviously do lots of like security disaster things, but like the there are fewer 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. We all do it. You have a night for yourself, but don't like the sound of the silence, so you turn on the TV just for the ambience. It's a little trick that helps you feel like you've got company and aren't alone. And other insurers, well, they may make you feel alone. But when you switch to GEICO, you've got claims reps available around the clock.

21:43So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help. And let's turn on the washing machine, just for good measure. Isn't that soothing? It feels good to have support. It feels good to Geico. Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over$1 ,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch Pet Insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90 % of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to FetchPet.com slash save right now for your free quote.

22:28That's FetchPet.com slash save. Are all batteries the same? That's like asking if all soccer players are the same. Take Messi, the most decorated player ever. Is there any other player who has achieved that? No, just him. Now take Duracell. Is there any other battery with power boost ingredients inside? No, just Duracell. Remember, goats only trust goats because they're built different. And Messi only trusts Duracell. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more.

23:15Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. The email client you described, Jake, all of a sudden like has my brain spinning. I'm like, this is a 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 two are as email people, but like I was inbox zero person for a long time.

23:53I have like 700 unread emails right now and it's stressing me out. You know how I am. You're a meanie. Yeah, you're a psychopath when it comes to email. We don't talk about that. But I think like I feel like we've all done a pretty good job here of like solving a very specific problem for ourselves, which is good. Oh, wait, can I tell you the thing that's broken about mine, which I think is very funny? I set up a bunch of keyboard shortcuts 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 type command T to have a new tab or a new task.

24:30This 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 mean a new tab when I just want it to be T. I cannot make Cloud Code 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 how to fix it. That seems unusable. It's not. I just have to go over and click the new tab button and then everything comes back and it's fine.

25:05As long as I switch tabs with the mouse, we survive. But anything, when I'm in the app, it refuses to acknowledge that anything else exists, Which strikes me as a very normal vibe coding problem. Yeah. This is what's 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?