2026-01-03
Vibecoding Projects
Below are some of the projects I've built using Claude Code. These have the prompt counts at the point where I was okay using the tools. Some of these prompt counts are much higher after being used as I wanted to add features or change how things worked.
I start the project with a CLAUDE.md file and then prompt using Claude Code. I tried to keep track of my prompts but there are also many I missed and I'm not including any back and forth or what may have required debugging and prodding.
However I do think the prompt counts may be useful to see.
Manga Reader
The first project I did was an application to manage and read my manga. The usual manga sites that available are all filled with ads and it's painful to use. I usually download my manga already and I could use a manga reader but vibecoding one I figured would be simple.
And indeed it was, it went relatively smoothly and I was quickly reading Knights of Sidonia. In other news, it was alright but not as good as Blame! by far. I liked Biomega way more as well.
Video Streamer - 140 Prompts
The next project was a plex substitute and this went fantastically. I was able to quickly get posters and covers after getting tmdb api key. Claude also got the transcoding working quickly and it handled multiple audio and subtitle tracks perfectly after prodding.
I did put in quite a bit of work to get the functionality I wanted and I have some handy things like being able to view how much data is being used and where everything is being stored.
I was quite impressed by Claude in this case.
Book Reader
This project is what brought me back to earth for my expectations. I figured a book reader would be far simpler for Claude to do, especially since the books are either PDFs or epubs. Claude definitely didn't seem to fully get everything working properly.
The video site was almost a one shot in how good it got the first version, the time I spent was adding on features I had always wanted in Netflix and Plex.
The book reader was unusable initially and it wasn't until I kept prodding it into the right direction that I could read something. I still don't think the project is that good and overall it's not very useful.
The movies and tv show names have weird formats but Claude was able to write regexes to parse everything out even for edge cases that I had to show it. However for books, it was unable to do that and it didn't do much in the way of cleaning any of the names up.
My theory is that video streaming sites are so common and the databases for them so extensive that Claude had a much easier time generating the code. Books are far smaller and not much code for it probably exists so there isn't enough to steal from.
Kanban - 62 prompts
This was an easy one for claude. I had originally let it free style this but I quickly realize I wanted structure. I had Claude set up just 3 sections, TODO, IN PROGRESS and DONE. I had Claude add in extra features but overall this is probably the simplest app but also the most helpful.
I use this to queue up work for Claude and I can then keep track of where and what Claude is working on. As things are finished, i test and move things into different buckets. I see people have created workflows where claude does the movement of cards but I think that is silly.
Forcing myself to read and pay attention to kanban board is how I stay involved and it definitely feels better than what I was doing before which was playing on my phone while waiting and then when claude was ready, i would give the next task.I think there is an interesting idea here about creating and IDE that is a kanban board.
Screen Share - 58 prompts
I wanted an app that will let me share a window or a region of the screen to a preview window. This preview window can then be put somewhere like a second monitor. There are some third party tools for this but they seem complex and are a pain to use.
This was my first Windows application and this time I had Claude use Go and Wails and to my surprise it basically got it done in the first try. I had it stream the selected window to the browser where it would serve it over http. This way I could stream a selected window to the preview pane or someone can visit the URL and see the my screen.
This was a fantastic experience and I'm quite happy with how this turned out.
Wired - 305 prompts
I use mobaterm for my main terminal needs and putty works great in a pinch. However I want a terminal environment similar to a browser. I'm planning to have an address bar, suggestions, bookmarks, and history information. I think this is going to help in making my life a bit easier.
Go and Wails seems to be a good fit, especially seeing how well the screen share project went.
There is definitely a pleasure in designing my dream terminal environment. The coding part is something I'm missing. But to be fair, the coding part is also probably the most boring as the interesting part is the emulator and that is done for me as I would have used xtermjs.
Claude is basically setting up the layout I want.
It took about 300 prompts to get my environment the way I wanted and actually using it. I will need to spend some time playing with it but I do like this style. My terminal environment is now very similar to a browser where there are tabs, saved connections and credentials, the ability to download and upload files. The reason this blew up in prompt counts is that its really two applications in one.
On one side the application is for ssh connection but it is also a fully functional sftp client. I have the option use an existing connection to start an sftp connection and then I get a nice file viewer that I can see files, preview them, download them and upload things.
I also can start other applications from my address bar which is handy.
This is probably the most impressive thing Claude has built so far and hopefully the most useful.
grdp Testing
This was a test project to use Go and talk to an rdp server. The goal was to embed a rdp client inside my wired application. I knew this was a bit of an ask so I tried a test application first.
This didn't go well. This was prompting but I could tell Claude was not having a good time with it. At least I wasn't.
Snip and Draw - 7 prompts
This was a tool to replace the Windows snipping tool. I wanted Claude to use Go and Wails to do this.
It got a basic version working but I quickly ran into performance issues and slowness. The goal was to replace the already slow windows tool and I found that using Go and Wails was a bad fit. Even the speed ups Claude came up with involved skipping the webview and so my entire approach was incorrect.
Snip and Draw V2 - 26 prompts
I restarted Claude and this time let it choose the tech for a fast and performant snipping tool. It chose rust and it seems to be much better now. The code generation was much more smooth and require less prodding. I could quickly tell this was the right approach.
I also now have a very fast and easy to use snipping tool specifically for my workflow. I think this kind of thing is what AI is really going to enable. The ability to write one off programs that scratch your specific itch.
Wired-rs - 61 prompts
I tried a rewrite in rust of my terminal manager. The goal was to get RDP working inside the application and so rust had Iron RDP which would work for me. I had rust use egui for the GUI stuff.
The biggest issue was my lack of knowledge of using egui and rust.
The other fairly large issue was that rust killed all iteration speed, the compilation time went up so much that there was never an actual flow state like there was when I was working on the go version. The go version I had a much better time running, testing and then describing the issue.
That iteration time I think is huge as the AI is already a bit slow.
I'm also going to stick with Wails as having the inspector tool and understanding html, css, and javascript lets me be more involved in the debugging process.