What People Are Vibe Coding (and Actually Using)
By: Lenny Rachitsky Source: Lenny’s Newsletter / Lenny’s Podcast Type: newsletter
Summary
Crowdsourced compilation from 1,000+ reader responses to the question: what have you vibe coded that you actually use regularly? 50+ curated examples organized by category — health/wellness (CarbScan for managing diabetes, weather-based clothing app with 85K users, personalized meal plans from fridge photos), parenting (Storypot emoji story creator for kids used by 60+ families, baby care logger, kids chore app as first iOS app, bedtime storytelling app), work productivity (Zapier Agent for meeting prep, Chrome extension for scheduling, accomplishments tracker), personal productivity (apartment buzzer auto-answering, restaurant recommendation app), personal development (conversation intelligence from call transcripts, daily language-learning newsletter, AI therapy journal), music production, games (RPG where you convince AI characters), and immigration document management. Plus extensive bonus section with 20+ additional examples.
Key Ideas Extracted
- N-of-1 personalized software era: Almost no examples are alike — everyone is solving their own hyper-specific problem; this is the defining characteristic of the vibe-coding movement
- Tool landscape snapshot (mid-2025): Cursor, Claude Code, Replit, and Lovable are top tier; v0, Bolt, ChatGPT follow; honorable mentions to Gemini, n8n, Zapier Agent, Warp, Windsurf
- Personal projects grow into products: Many tools built for personal use end up with tens, hundreds, or thousands of users — the weather clothing app hit 85K users, CarbScan became daily go-to for diabetes management
- Chrome extensions as dominant form factor: People spend most time in browsers, so Chrome extensions are the most common vibe-coded output
- Gender balance in vibe coding: Male-female ratio in responses more balanced than typical tech conversations — vibe coding is democratizing software creation
- Non-technical builders succeeding: Multiple examples of people with no coding background building functional apps (nicotine tracker as first app, baby logger, chore app as first iOS app)
- Parenting as major use case category: From story generators to baby trackers to homeschool games — parents are among the most motivated vibe coders
- The prompt-as-spec pattern: Lenny’s advice — describe what you want in plain English as if talking to a remote engineer, then iterate by describing changes
Notes
- Published Jul 8, 2025 on Lenny’s Newsletter. Subscriber-only post.
- Lenny also vibe coded tools for himself: YouTube thumbnail preview, podcast clip tweet crafter, most-mentioned books tracker
- Categories: health/wellness/style, parenting/family, work productivity, personal productivity, personal development, music, other/fun
- This is a companion piece to the “Everyone should be using Claude Code more” post (50 use cases for Claude Code specifically)
- Cross-reference: Colin Matthews prototyping guide, Claire Vo beginner coding episode
Raw Content
Re-scraped from Lenny’s Newsletter 2026-02-15. Full article content captured in Summary and Key Ideas above.