Unpopular Opinion: instead of vibe coding a 100 apps if you just made that 1 app, the best app on the internet, that would achieve far more for nostr.
Discussion
Not as unpopular as you might think
Yeah, that's why I always tell artists to stop making a bunch of paintings and just focus on making one really good painting. 😁
Does the artist sell, every sketch they make? Or are there special ones, the ones they care about? the ones they detail to perfection?
I have a lot to say in response because I've been thinking about this and working on it a lot:
1) No one is selling vibe coded Nostr apps (at least that I've seen), they are free software given away as a gift. You can take it or leave it.
2) I was just at the Munch Museum in Olso, and there were multiple displays of even the earliest sketches of what later became Munch's most famous works (and also many that never did). Same is true in nearly any art museum I've ever been to. Today, these early sketches are worth more than everything I own combined and people would pay good money for a piece of paper Van Gogh sneezed on, while at the time he was seen as just pumping out trash no one wanted. But now his work defines an entire movement.
3) Quick vibe coding apps is practice, brainstorming, prototyping, and idea generation that feeds into those "winner" apps. Refining your tools and practicing using them is a necessary part of ANY trade. The only difference here is it's happening in public whereas historically artists have kept their early drafts private. But this is just a natural side effect of FOSS.
4) Many people are working very hard to take their apps that started with AI and turn them into high quality user experiences, so this is a false dichotomy anyway.
This is the way.
Touche, I hope this turns out to be true, I'm seeing a lot of unmaintained PoCs, but I hope I'm wrong.
Actions > Talk
Most vibe hypers are very far from refining their prototypes. And often very far onto the next #protohype.
Yet they are still launched as actual products on conferences.
There's very little (constructive) interraction with the other builders that have similar goals. The code and prototypes might be FOSS, but the discussions are increasingly happening with robots and in private groups.
I have little problem with people working in the dark or using code automation tools.
Just don't waste my time with the hypocritical talking.
Correct. I almost never make standalone sketches. My focus is always on creating specific high quality artworks for select themes. Don't get me wrong, I do a ton of rigorous studying, tracing, and sketching, over and over and over. But my practice is always in the pursuit of making a single high quality and technically sound piece of artwork.
Alex Gleason doesn't care at all about his vibe-coded apps, and neither does he care about any future apps. Alex Gleason's efforts are on refining the tools themselves, without any thought on what they should produce. And that is why he is lost. We are not lacking in tools. We are lacking in vision.
"Vibe coding" 100 apps is the path to building that one great app. Innovation rarely comes from a single, calculated shot — it emerges through iteration, experimentation, and community play. Nostr thrives on diversity, tinkering, and creativity. Every small project sharpens skills, inspires others, and reveals what actually matters. The internet’s best app isn’t built in a vacuum — it’s born from trying, failing, remixing, and vibing.
The path to building great apps is reflecting upon diverse experiences perhaps those experiences can come from making or using 100 vibe-coded apps, but I sincerely doubt it. The world is a huge place, and many of the experiences relevant to building good decentralized apps are more accessible off of Nostr.
Programming even the most sophisticated social media app is almost trivially easy. What's hard is listening to others. What's hard is taking centralized apps seriously and taking the choices of their users seriously. Apologies to Alex Gleason for this example, but while email was a failure as a decentralized media, it is one of the greatest successes of any internet technology ever.
> "Vibe coding" 100 apps is the path to building that one great app.
Nah. Someone who can build that one great app can build little prototypes to test concepts out before folding them in.
Someone who only knows how to build prototypes can't scale up.
I'm creating 2 apps and vibed on each one +150h with claude3.7 - 4
Not one is ready but they evolve nicely.
I believe it's a skill apart.
I believe next time I can do it in 1/3 of the time for the same results as you get to learn how the models behave.
is anyone even using any of the vibecoded alps?
had a good chat on this thought with gleason you may find interesting
But that's haaaaa-uuurrrrd. 😩
Two totally unrelated skill sets and timelines.
Nature evolves through trial-and-error iteration.
Commercially viable products are more intentional than that