Vibe coding with AI app builders: a 30-day report
I built and shipped seven small apps using only AI app builders. Here's what worked, what didn't, and which builder I'd use again.
For 30 days I shipped one small app a week using only AI app builders — no manual editor work unless I had to. The goal was to see how far prompt-first development has actually come.
The apps
- A read-it-later app with a Chrome extension.
- A team standup logger with Slack integration.
- A recipe planner with a shared shopping list.
- A personal CRM.
- A markdown-based wiki for my notes.
- A landing page generator.
- A simple invoicing tool.
What worked surprisingly well
CRUD apps with auth, a database, and a clean UI shipped in an afternoon. The combination of a hosted backend and a builder that understands it (Replit + its backend, Bolt + Supabase, v0 + its database) genuinely collapses the timeline.
Iterating on UI was the biggest unlock. Asking for a redesign and getting it in 30 seconds is something I'd never go back from.
What didn't work
Anything that required a long-running background job or a complex integration ate hours. The builders happily generate the code; what they don't reliably do is debug it when it fails in production.
Performance optimization is also still a manual job. The default generated code is fine for prototypes, sloppy for scale.
Which builder I'd pick
Replit for full-stack apps with auth and data. The integrated backend removed the friction that used to sink prompt-built apps the moment you needed real users.
v0 for marketing pages and component-heavy UIs.
Bolt when I wanted to stay closer to the underlying code and iterate in StackBlitz.
Verdict
Prompt-first development is now a real workflow for real software, not just demos. It doesn't replace knowing how to code — it just changes which parts you have to do yourself.