For the holidays, I gave myself a little experiment: build a small web app for my wife to manage her travel itineraries. I challenged myself to avoid editing the code myself and just do it "vibe" style, to see how far I could get. In the end, the app was built with a $20 Claude…

Read the Tea Leaves

A developer built a travel itinerary web app using AI coding assistants (Bolt.new and Claude Code) with minimal manual coding. The experiment succeeded in creating a functional PWA with PocketBase backend for $21/month, but revealed limitations: AI tools aren't ready for non-programmers, generated code had accessibility issues and React performance problems requiring manual optimization, and token limits were frustrating. The experience highlights how AI-generated code works well for personal projects where requirements are simple and one user needs satisfaction, but remains unsuitable for professional codebases requiring team understanding and customer reliability.

An experiment in vibe coding