Does anyone with vibe coding experience have any suggestions on getting started? I've just started messing around with Base44... Is this my best bet to get started? Any specific apps or plugins to ChatGPT, etc. that may be worth taking a look at? Thank you

This is one of those things where everything can be relative. I have no experience with Base44 but it looks like its for building apps.

I have done some things from scratch but I typically write code to interface with hardware or do some stats or functions with large data sets, and a little document/contract review. I am not a strong coder but most of things I need to do fall within a narrow range and vibe coding has really sped things up for me. I must make my own instrumentation and circuit boards.

One area AI has really helped me out is when I have built new instrumentation to replace old stuff written in assembly language. I can tell it the new hardware, pinouts and anything I want changed or modified then ask it to translate the old code to C and incorporate the new requested functions.

Some of the biggest takeaways I have found are:
- It really helps if you have some knowledge of the subject you are dealing with.

- Vocabulary matters, overexplain things and be explicit in your instructions. I know the big selling point of AI is being able to use plain language. I typically do technical stuff, so I try to maintain the terminology. For a microcontroller I may ask something like: Initialize GPIO1, GPIO2, GPIO3 with their default state being digital inputs and activate the internal pullup resistors.

- Then in the instructions for operation I may overexplain what I want to do as a giant IF statement or truth table. If it's really complex AI will write the code in a more efficient manner such as using lookup table but the explanation should be written as if you are talking out something in a logical order.

- Next thing I have noticed is sometimes its easy to go off on tangents, especially when debugging or troubleshooting. For example, you may have a response with 5 steps. But step one is a bad response then you go off chain that discrepancy and forget where you were or the following steps are no logger possible.

- Be explicit and tell your AI to slow down and only give one step at a time and do not proceed until you say to. Once you are back up to speed tell the AI to resume normal response cadence.

- Lastly, paid versions seem to work much better than the free ones in my case. Since I am doing straightforward technical things on established hardware, I have found all the big companies seem to work about the same. I am also not a high frequency user. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude (Sonnet and/or Haiku)have all worked well for me.

I would take advantage of free trials and experiment and see what works better for you.
That's my experience. Everyone has a little experience because we all do something different.

Great thread.

I started last summer. Listened to a podcast on the way to the office about REPLIT. My intern who was into AI/new tech trends mentioned he had heard about it as well. Started playing around with a few concepts and slowly over time it has actually morphed into a very legit app our teams uses at all times. It's essentially all 20 chrome tabs we'd have up at any given time in one.

Built different "modules" or POC apps. The recent update to Claude was the biggest game changer by far.

My stack now is GitHub/suprabase/railway.

Use claude (AI, code, an cowork) for helping prompt a get organized but truly build in Cursor on desktop.

I was so used to Replit and hacking with things on the fly I figured out how to windows Remote Desktop on iPad or phone to make tweaks mobile.


Not sure if that is way to in the weeds but my suggestion is start with Replit or the other one (have love somewhere in the name) and lik all AI, just start playing around with it.

Be careful though! You might wake up 9 months from now and 100s of hours in "moonlighting" ie not biz hours building something pretty awesome!

What are you trying to accomplish? There are different tools that will get you to the finish line. AI is great to help you but you still need to put a path to follow.

Learn the code as well, it helps to be able to trouble shoot and catch issues that you might run into. AI can code decently, but it may not be able to trouble shoot an issue and you will get stuck.

I've mentioned this before, but I started modernizing my side gig app a couple of years ago, and wrote the REST API by hand the old fashioned way, then didn't get too far with the front-end before I stopped. Then in November I started paying $20 a month for Cursor AI "Pro" with the goal of writing the entire front-end with it in my spare time. This week it was done. I think I was 20x faster.

Yes, at least for now, you need to know what you're actually building, how to bring the pieces together, and deploy. It just helps and becomes an advisor for those kind of things.

Note Cursor integrates most of the major models, some which cost more with "tokens." For almost everything, I used the basic model which is unlimited, just choosing a better model when I thought the subject warranted it.

Per Grok:
Most users stay within the $20 credit (e.g., covers ~225 Claude Sonnet requests, ~550 Gemini requests, or ~650 GPT requests based on median usage).

I think vibecoding has different connotations. I'm not really using any of these tools to build out apps or software, but I'm using it to build out a bunch of AI assistants that can do stuff for me.

I just created this notebook in NotebookLM. It's built around Claude Code since that's what I'm really using.

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/b56cac87-3baa-41f8-96e6-e4d5aa18bad0?authuser=2

I have Gemini through work and have vibecoded several solutions. The easiest way to learn is to just do it. Have an idea of the problem you have and what would solve it.

Examples:

Auto-BCC for Gmail:
We have to log all of our emails into Salesforce. This was further amplified when we bought a solution for providing AI transcripts/briefs/etc. for clients that pulled emails from Salesforce.

Problem: The salesforce gmail integration is terrible. It takes at least 30 seconds to log an email, and half the time it doesn't even send.

Solution: A custom Chrome plugin that will automatically BCC the emailtosalesforce email address to ensure the email was logged. No intentional logging needed. Hit Compose or Reply All, the email address is added to the BCC line, email is logged. This could work for any situation where you needed BCC the same email address every time, not just salesforce.

https://github.com/jatzenhoffer/Auto-BCC-Gmail

Village:
I have a homelab that I use to deploy a number of services. I have different services for meal planning, photo storage, and chores.

Problem: Having multiple solutions is a problem when trying to improve spousal approval and adoption of the Homelab.

Solution: A Family Management Dashboard that combines chores, photos, and meals. Adds a calendar, rewards for chore completion, list, a cycling photo screensaver, and weather.

Don't have a Github for this as it's not ready for release.

Start small, and you'll be surprised at the things AI tools can accomplish. Practically speaking, I started out using Gemini Pro, then moved over to VSCode and used Gemini Code Assistant there. For the coders on here, you guys are heros. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just a guy with a dream.

I think vibe coding is a great way to get more people into programming because you can build tools to enhance your productivity, especially in niche applications. Most apps out there are for general use to maximize profit. With ai, that breaks down the barriers of high cost and time to build niche applications.

Here's the general cycle for vibe coding.

1. Plan - Create a markdown document of what you want your app to be. Layout the entire structure and instructions for how it works, features, etc. ai can help you with this. You'll want to put everything on there.

2. Decide - Figure out where you want this app deployed. Web, iOS, Android? What code you want to use? Download the platform tools. FYI, it still takes a ton of work to make something Multiplatform so start at something where you will use it the most.

3. Initial Build - I recommend using Cursor because it reads your project folder. You put your markdown document in that folder and any other reference files you want in there. Then prompt cursor to read the document and start building.

4. Test - once cursor builds out your initial project, test it! Make sure it runs. If you get errors, you copy and paste the error to the prompt and let cursor fix the bugs.

5. Add Features - keep adding features one by one in your document followed by testing each.

Notes:
- There's no way to 1 shot. Build your app little by little. ai can only handle so many tokens.
- Pace yourself. Vibe coding is more addicting than video games.
- You'll likely pay for more than 1 ai service. I pay for cursor, Claude, and Gemini. Cursor is the main for coding, Claude is for planning and coding in Xcode with Apple's iOS26 agent, Gemini is really good at asset generation.
- Understand the code.

Quote:

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Pace yourself. Vibe coding is more addicting than video games.

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Definitely. My new rhythm on my system is that I just build or tweak one thing a day.

The challenge is that these tools are getting so capable that for most of what I want to do, my imagination is the biggest limiting factor. Very easy to get caught up building the world's greatest system that you never actually get around to using because you're too busy tweaking it.

Pman17 said:

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I think vibe coding is a great way to get more people into programming because you can build tools to enhance your productivity, especially in niche applications. Most apps out there are for general use to maximize profit. With ai, that breaks down the barriers of high cost and time to build niche applications.

Here's the general cycle for vibe coding.

1. Plan - Create a markdown document of what you want your app to be. Layout the entire structure and instructions for how it works, features, etc. ai can help you with this. You'll want to put everything on there.

2. Decide - Figure out where you want this app deployed. Web, iOS, Android? What code you want to use? Download the platform tools. FYI, it still takes a ton of work to make something Multiplatform so start at something where you will use it the most.

3. Initial Build - I recommend using Cursor because it reads your project folder. You put your markdown document in that folder and any other reference files you want in there. Then prompt cursor to read the document and start building.

4. Test - once cursor builds out your initial project, test it! Make sure it runs. If you get errors, you copy and paste the error to the prompt and let cursor fix the bugs.

5. Add Features - keep adding features one by one in your document followed by testing each.

Notes:
- There's no way to 1 shot. Build your app little by little. ai can only handle so many tokens.
- Pace yourself. Vibe coding is more addicting than video games.
- You'll likely pay for more than 1 ai service. I pay for cursor, Claude, and Gemini. Cursor is the main for coding, Claude is for planning and coding in Xcode with Apple's iOS26 agent, Gemini is really good at asset generation.
- Understand the code.

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Much better said. I'm the "non tech" kinda person you referred to as getting into programming. I'm in a relationship driven sector but it was worth it to build what I have. It's essentially our GIS/deal research and CRM and BOV/valuation tool all in one.

I'm "somewhat tech savvy" but some would say I can barely read.