From Skeptic to Believer: Transforming Software Tools with Vibe Coding Platforms | #438

Dan Hafner: Hey, what's up my friends? Welcome back to the podcast. So I am finally given into the vibes, my friends. have long talked a lot of crap about the vibe coding world.

And I'm here today to say, you know what? I give in, I give up, I'm on the bandwagon. I've had a lot of things I wanna update all of you on over the past month. Basically, if you've been listening to this show for a long time, you can go back if you haven't to some previous episodes.

⁓ About last fall, I really started to get into this topic of what's going on with Vibe Coding, what's going on with Lovable, how are these tools working? Are you able to actually build stuff? Is it quality? Is it shippable?

Can you build real businesses off of this? And at the time... ⁓ I was skeptical, I really was. And there's a lot of reasons for that I can get into.

I had tried my share of tools. I don't wanna name any specifically. You kinda can know the names that I'm probably talking about. The lovables, the replets, the whatever.

All those different ones, bass 44, all of them. I'm not picking on anyone particularly. At the time, just, I failed to really see something that was really mind blowing, something that was like, ⁓ I can really build off of this. I can really build something that's sustainable, that's quality, that can be really, really, really well done.

Now, all of that has changed in the past, I don't know, 30 to 45 days, probably starting about in January, it's early March now. ⁓ There is a tool if you have not heard, you're probably not very versed in this world and you've probably been living under or you're just living under a rock. ⁓ It is a tool called Claude code. OK, ⁓ this, my friends, I think finally it's something finally clicked in my in my mind and something was finally like, ⁓ this caused me to really pay attention.

This caused me to really dive down the rabbit hole. and really investigate what was going on with this. There's been a lot of stuff about Anthropic and Claude in the news recently. We talked about it on a previous episode with a guest of mine.

There has been, at the time of this recording, the government and Anthropic have fallen out ⁓ of that deal that they were having because Anthropic did not want to give the government unrestricted access to the entire technology, ⁓ which, You know, I would tend to fall in agreement with. I kind of see that as a pretty noble thing. think that was, you know, just from a personal perspective, I really think that what the ⁓ CEO of Anthropic really thought through, that was a very hard decision to make.

I mean, I wouldn't, I'm glad that I was not the person that had to make that decision. I can only imagine the pressure that was put on him for that kind of stuff. But I will say bravo to him for standing true in his beliefs in the company mission and ⁓ for really holding that line, which I'm sure when the government is pressuring you to do stuff, thank God we live in America is all I can say. mean, that was quite the story, quite the story.

So that's just kind of my thoughts on that. But then there's also been this whole flood. of people away from chat GPT into Claude, which actually took the server down, I believe on Monday, this past Monday, which was pretty interesting. And it's just a very interesting phenomenon to see how all of this is going.

But I'm not here to talk about the political ramifications and all that kind of stuff with it. I'm here to talk about the tool, right? Now I will say back in January, I really decided to dive down this Claude code rabbit hole. ⁓ and holy shit.

Am I glad I did, man. That is, I think this tool is, is going to be an absolute game changer, not only for me personally inside of what I do and how I run Dapper, code, ⁓ but just for millions and millions of people. It already has been right. And I will say I am nowhere near a well versed, ⁓ expert on this stuff.

don't know if anybody really can claim to be because it is something that is so relatively new. It's not like it came out in January, but you know, I mean, all of this stuff people people can't claim to have years and years of experience, right? Because it's just not that old of stuff. ⁓ But man, I the more I dive down this, the more I have really, really seen just how not only like a future pacing thing of like, wow, this is really going to change.

And it's not only just for vibe coding, it's not just for building apps, right? ⁓ If you link Claude code and you download a tool called Visual Studio Code, you can have an extension that is a Claude code extension inside of Visual Studio Code. And if you have Markdown files, man, the stuff you can create, I have built an entire business operating system for my entire business that I'm moving everything into. all in on this stuff.

I mean, it is truly that game changing. And I will say there is ⁓ inside of the specific vibe coding software building world and functionality that these things provide. There is a tool. I have a lot of people.

I was actually just messaging a gentleman that's been a friend of mine and he was talking about, hey, have you been using lovable? It's working really, really well for my web application, but it doesn't have mobile stuff. I can't push it to the app store. And I was like, hmm, interesting, because I have a couple of other tools that I have been using that ⁓ I'm gonna share with you guys, just because I love you guys so much, ⁓ that you can do that kind of stuff.

And they have been really, really big game changers for me. ⁓ And yeah, I almost hesitate to share stuff, but you know, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna hide it. I'm not gonna hold it back from you guys.

I think you guys could use this stuff. ⁓ let me see if I can share my screen. and I preface all of this with... ⁓ with the idea that, you know, I wanna show you the real results that I've had with these tools.

So this tool that I'm showing on the screen right now for you, those of you guys watching is called Vibecode. Okay, it's called, I think it's at vibecodeapp.com. They literally went with the name, just, they just went for it and they just called it Vibecode, right?

It's kind of funny. But these are all of the different applications that I've been able to build inside of about a month. ⁓ It is wild. I mean, these are apps that we're rebuilding for clients, ⁓ new ones that we've kind of migrated from other platforms, other no code platforms, and then completely new ideas.

There's an internal tool I'm building for my project management and client management, ⁓ all of these different things. ⁓ It is, I'm gonna stop sharing now, but I just kind of wanted to show you guys all of that because... That is the one tool. the cool thing about the Vibecode app is that it is ⁓ built on Claude code, right?

So when you're in there ⁓ typing and prompting, it is running Claude code agents to be able to build your tool. it's, you don't even need a Claude subscription. You just, you basically pay for credits just like anything else and you can have it on auto reload. And then you just go.

You just go, right? So I have my card set on an auto reload. And then every time it gets below $5, it just pays more. And I got all those credits and it goes back down.

right. So I have, I have found that it's, it can get a little expensive, you know, depending, but it also depends on the model that you're running, right? You can actually pick if you run Sonnet, which is one of their lower level ones. It's a lot cheaper.

If I'm building, like if I'm putting in an initial, to build the tool from scratch from like a product requirements document, I will go with Opus 4.5. It is more expensive, but it creates incredibly well done things. Like almost out of the box ready.

I wouldn't say after one prompt, but then you can go in and fix a little bit of stuff with Sonnet, right? I will say I have tried Opus 4.6. It is...

stupidly expensive on these platforms. Like I tried one little change to an app that was already built and I was like, hey, I need this little change done for, it wasn't even like a huge, like adding a new feature or anything like that. And it was like $10 for one prompt that changed stuff. mean, if I'd have ran that with Sonnet, it would have been like 40 cents, you know, of like credits.

So I was like, I don't know about that. I'm not trying to burn through credits that fast with things. ⁓ But I will say that this is quite an incredible tool to be able to vibe code and see things. And the other cool thing is you can now build web applications, responsive web applications, just like you can inside of Lovable.

⁓ But they also have the ability to create ⁓ native apps. Now, I will say they only are allowing iOS apps, Apple apps at the moment. I've launched a couple with clients. It works great.

You go through this tool called Expo. ⁓ It can be a little bit of ⁓ a, you know, it's not really technical, but you gotta kinda know what you're doing and kinda have a little bit of experience with launching apps to the app store because you wanna make sure you have the right screenshots and the right SEO and ASO and all that kinda stuff, but you can do it. ⁓ They do not have the ability to launch to Google Play yet, but they say it is coming. They say they're working on that.

So will it be in a week? Will it be in six months? I don't know. but this is the best tool that I've seen so far that allows for ⁓ just building just incredible stuff, incredible stuff.

And you can publish to the App Store. So that's videcodeapp.com. you would like, ⁓ there's a link in the show notes ⁓ that's a referral link.

If you sign up through there, I get a little bit of a kickback from that, which I would truly, truly appreciate. Just a small way to... support the Tech Bytes podcast. You don't have to, but if you click through the link in the show notes, ⁓ you can help benefit the show and benefit the money here ⁓ that funds the Tech Bytes podcast.

So I would appreciate if you go through that referral link. If not, I don't really care either. ⁓ Okay, so that's the first tool. And the other thing I wanted to say too was there is a very cool way, I mentioned Visual Studio Code earlier.

We have a very cool way that you can... basically called Secure Shell, and I had to learn a little bit about it. I didn't really know what the heck that was. I never used Visual Studio before, never used Secure Shell, it was all foreign to me.

I'm a no-code guy, right? So there's a button that says open in VS Code, and I was like, hmm, how does that work? And it took me a little while, took me about a couple of days, but I figured out what to do, and now what I can do is basically open up the app in the editor here in Vibe Code. There's a button at the top, with a drop down, click open in VS code.

It then opens that in VS code and it has all the code in the markdown files. And then with my plugin, I can then type using Claude code, which changes. say, Hey, give me three improvement ideas on how to make this app better and more secure. Boom Claude code works.

says, would you like to implement these? I say, yes, it goes through and it, and it makes those changes to the code in VS code. And then that instantly is secure shelled transferred to the Vibecode app. I don't have to publish anything, I don't have to do anything.

You have to wait like 10 seconds and it's updated. You refresh the app, boom, it's all there. I didn't use any of my credits inside of Vibecode. Do understand what I'm saying with that?

Now, you do need a ProClaude subscription to be able to have the extension and to be able to do that. So yeah, there's costs to doing this stuff with Claude code and with Vibecoding. But I will say it is the benefits and the revenue that's possible way outweigh, ⁓ so much outweigh the cost that you're gonna incur, right? The other one I wanted to show you guys ⁓ was a tool that I have seen ⁓ which has been kind of similar and it's called OnSpace, OnSpace.

ai. Now you can build a couple of different things. You can do websites. you know, web applications, you can do iOS and Android.

They do have the ability to publish to iOS and Android through that same expo thing. And then they also have agentic app builders, which I have not really played around with a lot, but look really, really cool. I just have not had a use case for one yet, to be honest with my stuff and with my client's stuff, but it's pretty incredible. I'm not 100 % sure what they...

run on, I don't think it's Claude code, but it's cool because you can have, if you upgrade to a paid account, these run on credits, not like actual like money, like vibe code. You can have them public or private, and then you can also link to SuperBase. You can have an internal ⁓ cloud database. So I have a couple of client apps that we've built inside of here that we're getting ready to launch and go through.

I have not actually launched any apps publicly with. this with this tool. So I will say I'm not sure about the publication process, but it does say, like if I go into one here, ⁓ there is, if you go to publish, there is publish to App Store and publish to Google Play, right? So you do have that ability.

And then the other cool thing is if you go right here, you can sync your project to GitHub and then you can immediately ⁓ have the app open in sync with the GitHub. which is really, really cool. just create a repository in GitHub, which is another thing I kind of had to learn about and figure out how to use. And then the other thing about that is that if you open up your Claude code instance, which I don't think I'm sharing actually.

If you open up your Claude code, which you just would go to from your paid Claude account, you can choose that repository. And then you can make changes to it right in here. So you code in Kot and you prompt in Cloud Code. And then what that does is it goes over and it updates the code in GitHub.

then there's basically a button that says Create Pull Request, which is updating that. And then that immediately syncs back over to OnSpace. So I say all that to hopefully not confuse you. But there's all these different tools that work together.

And yeah, there still is a tech stack that you need to have. Right now, mine is, like I said, Vibe code, Claude and Claude code, ⁓ VS code, Visual Studio code, and GitHub. Really, four. And then I have that OnSpace tool, which I would probably actually do away with.

If Vibe code could do, or once they can do, Google Apps, I'll probably just be building exclusively in that. It's that good, I think. ⁓ Those are the tools, those are the tools. Now the cool thing is GitHub is free, Visual Studio code is free, you just download it on your computer.

⁓ And then obviously you need the paid Claude subscription, which I am still only on the $20 a month version. Now the only thing with Claude is the usage is not like it is with ChatGPT, right? I have run into times where it's like, sorry, you hit your hourly limit and I can't do anything. And I'm like, ⁓ crap.

Now I have turned on use extra usage for mine, but in all likelihood, I will be upgrading to the hundred, $200 a month thing eventually, because I just see endless potential with this and I'll be able to cancel so many other, that sounds expensive, right? When you say, oh, I want to pay $200 a month for stuff. I think Vibecode actually has a plan that's $200 a month. I'm not on that plan either, but.

The difference between their $50 and $200 a month one is only like support. So it's really not a big deal. But you think about, oh man, I'm paying $200 a month for this, $200 a month for that. It can get to be a lot, but if you can also cancel a lot of other things, it really makes a difference.

that is my breakdown on this. I think it's worth doing. I think it's such a game changer in everything that I'm doing, and then you should be trying as well. So that is all for this episode.

Appreciate all of you guys coming in and listening, and I will talk to you next time. Be sure to go to dappernocode.com. can find out more information about me, or if you want to hit me up directly.

You can just send me an email. to danatdappernocode.com. You can send me a direct email if you want to hear me talk about any kind of specific topic or any kind of specific tool or review it or anything like that.

I'd be happy to do that. So you can send me a direct email danatdappernocode.com. And don't forget, if you want to sign up for a Vibe Code account and give it a try, please click the referral link in the show notes and that will give you a bonus, gives me a bonus and everyone makes out.

It's really good. So you can give it a try. All right. That's all for this one, guys.

We'll talk to you next time.