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Ask HN: Any example of successful vibe-coded product?

84 points by sirnicolaz ↗ HN
Many people talk about vibe-coding and about the different ways to use this development "methodology" successfully. I wonder though if anyone really managed to push to production anything that has been fully or almost fully created through LLM assisted coding. Do you have anything to share, whether you or someone else created it? Possibly something more complex than a static webpage.

98 comments

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sorcercode
Not sure how you would define successful though. I built a Firefox addon almost entirely through vibe coding and I know at least 5 other random souls on the Internet who have used and thanked me for it. But it is by no stretch, if popularity or how much money it makes, are the measures.

I was trying to test the theory if it's even possible to release something production grade with vibe coding. Wrote about the experience here https://kau.sh/blog/container-traffic-control/

prhn
I vibe coded a windows shell extension that renders thumbnails for 10-bit videos. Windows does not do this out of the box.

I also built a Preview Pane Handler for 10-bit videos.

The installers (WIX) were vibe coded as well.

So was the product website and stripe integration. I created a bespoke license generation system on checkout.

I don’t think I wrote a single line of C++ code although the WIX installers and website did receive minimal manual adjustments.

Started with Claude but then at some point during development Codex got really good so I used only that.

https://ruptureware.com

transitorykris
I own a small bar and inventory management is either spreadsheets or saas products meant for larger operations. With the exclusion of some very small changes (e.g., deleting dead code) it’s 100% written using Claude Code. Initial design was generated from markdown documentation I wrote, and each change has been careful and incremental. A few blind alleys lead in the wrong direction, but was always easy enough to back up and try a different approach.

Database migrations and anything related to calculations have had a fair bit of hand holding. Beyond tests it writes I do still test by hand for confidence.

It’s coming up to a year of use. Claude Code credits has still not exceeded the cost of a paid product. I don’t count my time here because this doubles as keeping my technical side busy, and it’s been enjoyable.

tmaly
I happened to go to brunch at a fancy restaurant on New Years Day. They were still updating their wine inventory with a spreadsheet.
transitorykris
Spreadsheets can work but get clumsy really fast. Bottle cost can vary as costs change (case discounts, price changes.. and holding inventory of an item across multiple purchases), audit logging (spelunking into the undo history), multiple staff interacting with the system.. All solved problems, just not at the price point or UX we need at this scale.
Imustaskforhelp
I once created a pomodoro multiplayer application after being frustrated by https://cuckoo.team (although good software, nothing against the team) just not working/actively glitching

spocklet-pomodo.hf.space/

I created it as a single main.go with just a single main dependency (gorilla websockets iirc) and I think It's pretty successfull between me and my friends and I am not thinking of monetizing it ever

There is also https://spocklet-beta-pomodo.hf.space/ which has some more features to make it more user friendly that I got suggestion for so yeah

I made it out of complete frustration and the first prototype was built in <30 minutes but I guess I won't really take credit of it because I am just pleasant that I can now use such a software and perhaps other might too.

I don't know but I am very gloomy about AI mostly but prototyping in domains I don't know too much about to create a "just good enough" for my own use case is the only valid use case I find of it I guess.

Lionga
Why do I read about all the vibe coders claiming to be 20X engineers in LLM threads and replacing many departments. Yet here is not a fking single commercially successful thing here?

Funny also how Loveable and the like are hiring engineers like crazy, yet think engineers are not needed anymore. Why not just vibecode Loveable itself? Oh wait I can tell you why.

sieep
Even worse, almost all of these links look exactly the same. Similar heros, similar calls to action, etc.

Ive even noticed fortmatting bugs that are seemingly identical on two different websites lol

jedberg
My friend created an iPhone app that controls a set of MCP servers that will control all the smart things in his house. Completely vibe coded. The servers are in Python, which he can read but not really write, and the app is in Swift, which he doesn't understand at all.

https://github.com/adrianco/c11s-house-ios

soared
MCP to turn on a light bulb?
hugs
i'm vibe coding vibium, a test automation tool in the spirit of playwright and selenium. (was #1 on hn last week for a little bit with a lively discussion.)
vunderba
Piece Together is an animated puzzle game that I built with a fairly heavy reliance on agentic coding, especially for scaffolding. I did have to jump in and tweak some things manually (the piece-matching algorithm, responsive design, etc.), but overall I'd wager that LLMs handled about 80% of the work.

I've never seen anything like it since the original days of the game "The Island of Dr. Brain" released in the early 90s.

https://mordenstar.com/projects/piece-together

randoglando
Love it, bookmarked! The animation adds another layer of strategy to jigsaw!
Gys
You define ‘successful’ as ‘managed to push to production’? I think that is a disappointing low barrier.
rabf
A lightweight GTK Linux chat client that is not based on any web tech and supports most of the features offered by the various API's out there such as audio and image gen.

https://github.com/rabfulton/ChatGTK

I'm sure the code can be critisized, but I'm happily using the application I wanted that did not exist having never programmed python in my life.

OfflineSergio
With all the AI hype lately, if a product like that actually existed, you would’ve heard about it by now.
wjgilmore
I’ve built and launched numerous SaaS products (which have paying customers) which were almost entirely built usibg AI agents including https://securitybot.dev and https://dependencydesk.com.

My experience so far has been if you possess both deep domain-specific experience and significant coding experience then these coding LLMs, and most notably Opus 4.5, are the greatest productivity booster in the world.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt
Thanks for sharing. Are you getting customers by outreach, seo, ads or some other way?
oliwary
https://spaceword.org - a daily word game inspired by banana grams, where you need to arrange 21 letters in a tight square. Has around 400 daily active players.

I'm pretty familiar with the underlying stack, which helped a lot since I knew the pitfalls. But pretty much all of the code is written by an LLM.