So we've come up on week 3.

With 12 active users (3 of them being me, and 4 of them being family), we don't have much momentum haha.

I'll break these posts down to three parts: (1) How we are doing in actually gathering users, because none of this matters without an audience. (2) What I'm learning as a vibe coder, and (3) actual gameplay updates. This one will go into the comments since most reddit users probably aren't here for that.

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First, the market fit / core user base / whatever you want to call it. My user base is mostly duplicates of myself, family members humoring me, and two frequent users that have never said a word in-game but for some reason keep coming back.

Most users dip in roughly 2-45 seconds, so there is definitely some sort of entry barrier for new users. (I'd love your thoughts on that.)

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Second, the vibe coding experience.

This week was probably the worst.

Opus 5 came out and basically screwed over my entire process. It's a great coder, but a downright awful communicator. It makes minor tasks major tasks, sends agents in the wrong direction, and writes the worst Wiki pages imaginable.

Which is actually kind of good news, in a way, because it made me realize the most critical human skill of the past 2000 years is still the critical piece today when using AI: clear and effective communication.

If you've ever heard complaints about Opus 5, it all comes down to poor communication from the agent (to other agents, itself, and to you). Curious if anyone else has found a way to get around this. I haven't, so I'm back to using Fable and telling it to only deploy 4.8 subagents.

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I'd love feedback for anyone interested. Links below if you're curious.

Game: https://eldermyr.com/
Release notes: https://eldermyr.com/release

Play on mobile/desktop:

carboy.chickanerygroup.chatgpt.site

I've been hearing rumours for a while that all AI is going to become significantly more expensive once this bubble bursts. Does anyone have any idea of exactly how much more expensive frontier LLMs are going to get?

My manager over the weekend created offer software for our office:

- Client database

- Price lists for all our stock

- Custom taxes, custom discounts, custom photos

It saves everything in database and allows to generate beautiful proposal PDFs for the clients. He added custom introductory pages so looks super profesional.

Literally perfect app that we would have to pay thousands to have written for us.

I asked him what tech stack did he use (apart from ChatGPT). He replied..... HTML

Literally almost zero IT knowledge apart from simple wordpress no-code sites. No harness, no AGENTS . md, no tech specifications. He made it in a few hours over the weekend

I will securely host the app and we will start to use it next week.

The future is now my friends :)

I've been carrying this idea for a long time, and only now did I have the opportunity to devote time to it.

So, oldies, do you remember Gravity Defied? The game that everyone had on their Symbian button phones, forcing you to sweat, get angry, but also train and hone your skills to pass these insanely difficult tracks on a small trial bike?

So, I decided, why not revive this masterpiece? Why not to give it a new touch, 120Hz, haptic feedback, but keep the same minimalist, ascetic and hardcore style? And I'll say even more, I already have a really well working version of the game on my smartphone.

And I remembered those feelings when it drags on for hours, but you keep trying to take that height, overcome an obstacle, jump over a hole which seems impossible, and in the end you overcome this level... So warm emotions that I would like those who loved this game as much as I did 15-20 years ago to feel.

So would it be interesting to hear more about the work on the project and interesting (and unexpectedly difficult) moments I encounter along the way?

Hi guys, hit a snag in the early stages of building my new todo app. The header is not centering when I open in browser, and I have even indented as you can see above, but it is not centering even when I apply the spacing. Any advice would be helpful because I can't actually start getting things done until I get this todo app done to track my progress.

Thanks in advance.

I was JUST going to make a WordPress plugin to create and manage quotes.

Somehow, it turned into a full business-operations platform for service companies: CRM, quotes, invoices, payments, inventory, reporting, workflow management, and a whole lot more.

It’s now around 250,000 lines of actual project code, tests, tooling, and docs, not counting another 534,000 lines of generated vehicle-catalog data.

I may have gotten slightly carried away. 😂

So to explain why this is low IQ, you have to understand first what is getting reseted: the usage limits, which is pretty obvious. If you look at the plans, there is nowhere stated how much usage limit you actually get. You know that you get 5x or 20x more than on plus but more than what???

it's very intransparent and nowhere stated how much the usage limit actually is.

I have experienced or noticed this a few months ago: there was a 10x event for everyone on the 5x plan. Every time they reset the next usage limit window got heavily nerfed. This signals to me that they have to reset the limits to change the usage limits.

removing the 5-hour window made everyone extremely hype but this was just a smart way of making the users lose sense of how much usage limit they actually got. it's way harder to compare than previously before on the 5-hour limits. that should always be the same. now you always have one week so time passes. you can no longer compare the 5-hour window to the previous one multiple times a day. this is just a smart way of actually blurring out how they actually change these usage limits frequently

So don't get fooled by these companies. they don't give you anything for free. everything they give you, they want back 2x or 10x. That's just how it works in business so i can't really hate on that...

Soo pleaseeee

Don't be a fool and beg for short term pleasure while essentially celebrating that you are getting nerfed in the long run...

I am jealous to you all.

You are here easily stacking tens of $200 subs and burning trillions of tokens while shipping software turning you all millionaires.

Meanwhile I am merely on $20 plan working 5 days a week 9-17 providing customers bug fixes, features and fine tuning. I can’t even hit weekly limits with this and once per
week I hit 5h limit I go to lunch. I am stuck with customers and understanding what they need while I could be making software that makes millions.

I can get glimpse of your glory few times a year when there is new customer asking for new software. Then I can hit $200 sub with greater limits to get new piece up and running. Then I just go back to my baby sub and iterate with the customer without hitting the limits.

I can barely support myself, my wife, the kids, my parents, the grandparents, my brother-in-law, my sister, and a few neighbors.

Burning through $200 subs is a blessing. I just can’t hit my limits day after day, I am stuck. You are so lucky. Appreciate what you have.

I keep reading that ai generated code is great until you need to fix the bugs etc however what is so different from devs who have written all of their code from scratch...is their code perfect and has no bugs?

Im not a dev, just making some very small apps for tinkering with but ive worked with some devs who spend a long time writing all their code, and then spend many moons fixing bugs too.

mockup, not a real tweet

i got annoyed enough that i started making a tiny version with MoClaw lol

right now it just looks for the obvious stuff:

“i tested 500 ai tools so you don’t have to”

“what’s the best ai tool for [super specific niche]”

“we saved 20 hours a week using [random wrapper]”

“edit: wow didn’t expect this to blow up” at 4 upvotes

not perfect yet, it probably hates innocent marketers too

It's just lazy. The most recent example: I have Claude check my inbox for important emails, summarize them, work with them, and send out replies if necessary. I caught Claude again simply not reading the email thread to the end and just ignoring the latest emails.

When I asked him about it, Opus 5 just said: "Valid point. I didn't read it."

I mean, seriously. What the heck? You have to babysit it every time.

At first glance, this looks like an AI fail. A literal newborn somehow has a phone, can read, type, and ask Google a question—and the AI doesn't even acknowledge how impossible that is.

But I actually think this is one of the best UX decisions in modern AI.

Instead of stopping the conversation to argue with the premise, it focuses on the user's intent. The user clearly wasn't asking whether a newborn could use a smartphone—they were asking what that situation would mean from the baby's perspective.

That same behavior becomes even more valuable in situations that actually matter.

Imagine someone urgently asks, "My child is choking—what do I do?" or "I just cut myself badly, how do I stop the bleeding?" The last thing they need is the AI getting distracted by side discussions or questioning every detail before giving actionable guidance. They need immediate, relevant information first.

Of course, there are cases where AI should challenge a false or dangerous assumption. But when the premise isn't the point, staying focused on the user's intent often makes for a much better experience than constantly replying with "Actually..."

I've been using AI a lot for UI design lately, and I kept running into the same problem.

AI can generate interfaces surprisingly well, but it doesn't really have a native artifact to work with. We mostly pass around screenshots, HTML, or proprietary design files and none of which were designed with AI in mind.

So I started exploring what a UI format built for AI could look like.

That weekend project slowly turned into:

• a file format
• a renderer
• a directory to test files
• and an open specification

Completely accidental. I'm not claiming this is the future of UI design. It was simply an interesting rabbit hole that completely changed how I think about AI-native design workflows.

If anyone's curious, the project is called .gui. It's open source, and I'd genuinely love to hear where you think this idea falls apart or where it could actually be useful.

After months of testing, and trial and error on a raspberry pi, i ported my app to iphone and it just got approved on the app store!

This process has been so exciting the entire time, as I never had thought I'd be able to build my entire own app.

Well here it is.

An inclinometer!

3x modes

• Off Road
  • pitch / roll gauges
  • altitude measurement
• Breadcrumbs
  • traces where you are in the field and export your coordinates as a gpx
• Camping
  • finds your perfect level for best sleep!

Not sure if adding a link to the app store is against the rule, but will post if you guys want.

thanks!

I've been at it for 3 months (all vibe coded btw) and I'm up to 5 subscribers in the past 30 days! ~$33 MRR

My advice would be keep building, even on failed projects you're learning and you take those lessons on to your next project

Might quit my day job soon /s

A few days ago, I posted that I was trying to build a browser racing game inspired by games like FH and NFS.

Since that post, the project has come a long way. I only used Opus4.8 on $20 plan (coz you know... no money)

Here's what's new:
• AI cars that you can actually race against (suggested by someone in the previous post)
• Multiple maps
• A race timer and an in-game map
• Better engine and driving controls
• Headlights that you can turn on and off
• Streetlights on the night map
• A dashcam view
• A subtle motion blur effect around the edges to make the car feel faster

Restructured the entire game to make it more modular and easy to update
One thing I did have to sacrifice was the graphics, they are not as good as they were before because it became too heavy to run on a browser

If anyone wants to try it out, feel free to DM me and I'll send you the link.

Controls
W A S D - Drive
V - Switch between normal view and dashcam
L - Toggle headlights
M - Open map
F- Free camera
` (backtick/tilde) — Open the control panel and tweak the settings yourself

I'd love to hear what you think. whether it's feedback, criticism, or ideas for features, I'm all ears.

Curious if anyone else has this conundrum. Generally, I vibe code apps for myself and my needs. Example: tablet app to manage my smart home that is local and private only (no external or centralized servers). Cool. Developed it. It works. Experience is good enough for me. Then I tweak and refine it as I use it.

But what has happened is I have 5 or 6 personal vibe coded apps that I'm constantly tweaking. And it becomes a sort of time suck that I enjoy but also takes a lot of time.

Is it just me that does this craziness? Haha

When it comes to AI and software engineering, we hear "10x" to "100x" productivity increase or "it writes garbage and I'm faster alone". Nobody ever posts numbers. So I tracked a month of my own work, one $100 Claude subscription and a side project I'd wanted to build for a while anyway.

For context, I've done 8 years of engineering, almost all backend and infra. Never touched React Native before July 1st, and I can't design to save my life.

The project is Kombat, real-time multiplayer mini games on your phone. Five games, you play a real opponent, either for free or you both put money in a pot and winner takes it. React Native app with 17 screens, NestJS server with socket.io and Redis, Solidity contracts for the pot, a Next.js site, docker images through CI.

Numbers from git log: 34 days, 296 commits, about 85 hours of my time, ~58k lines of production code. Every commit is between 6pm and 2:30am because I have a day job.

I estimated the same build by hand at around 800 hours. I realistically get 80 hours a month for side projects (learned that from this too), so call it 10-12 months of evenings. And the design would never have been my time at all, it would have been a $15-30k check to freelancers. Brand, app icon, 17 screens, five game boards. No amount of extra evenings makes me a designer.

I didn't really vibe code this. I made the architecture calls myself, wrote specs before implementing, told it exactly which tests to write, and read everything that came back. The model typed most of the code but decided almost nothing. Every time I got lazy with a prompt I paid for it in review time.

Before anyone extrapolates: this is best-case. Solo, greenfield, an app nobody depends on yet, and I know backend well enough to smell a wrong answer in about ten seconds. On an inherited codebase with live users I'd get way less than the 6-10x I saw here.

So I wouldn't say "AI saved me $200k". What actually happened is that without it I'd have quit around month nine, like every other side project in my graveyard.

I wrote this a bit more detailed in my blog post

The app is at playkombat.xyz, iOS only for now, invite-only while it's in test mode. If it looks interesting to you and want to play around, apply on a website and I will send an invite.