As a summer treat to myself, I spent a few bucks on replit to build a GoodReads style app – just so I could do a vibe-check on the current state of .. vibe coding.
What worked pretty well:
– It was fairly easy to build and deploy a full-stack application. Authentication, database, hosting – all handled without a fuss. 👍🏾👍🏾
– replit’s AI agent has really improved in the last six months. The code was decent and it could follow my instructions well 👍🏾
– replit’s GitHub integration allowed for some interesting workflows. I pushed changes from replit to GitHub, then made changes locally using Claude Code before pushing them back to replit to deploy automatically 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾
What didn’t:
– Even for a relatively straightforward CRUD app, I needed to redesign the database schema, debug some strange edge cases, and force the agent to refactor some interesting design decisions 👎🏾
– replit’s effort based pricing model gets expensive very very fast. Picking the “High Power Model” is like gambling at the high-roller table. You will lose money very fast for random results 👎🏾👎🏾😱
Hype, more hype, and marginal costs:
– The replit subreddit is a fascinating vignette into the current state of vibe-coding: desperate posts begging for help, complaints about runaway costs, and also someone who didn’t know they could edit code without the AI Agent.
– Podcast bros and AI influencers pitch that “anyone can build micro-SaaS software and make bank”, but the people who will succeed will be the ones who understand how to build products, and can steer and override the AI agents.
– People pinning their hopes on AI building everything for them will end up paying premium prices to debug problems they can’t understand.
I am very very bullish about the AI space and am very impressed with what I could build after a couple of nights of vibe coding. I am stoked about being able to use Claude Code with replit as well as how easy it is to rollback and modify the app.
But it’s also clear that if I didn’t understand concepts like database normalization, system design, and error handling I would have been in a world of (very expensive) pain – not my cup of tea (no judgement!).