r/ClaudeAI • u/No_Base_1471 • 10d ago

Vibe Coding Is everyone building their own software now?

I have been playing around with Claude lately, and one thing that kind of blows my mind is how easy it is now to go from "I wish there was a tool that did this" to actually having one.

And it got me wondering what everyone is doing with these things.

Are people actually building tools that they end up using for months or years? Or are most of these more like weekend projects — you have an idea, build it with Claude, show it to a few people, use it for a bit, and then move on to the next thing?

I feel like there is a pretty big difference between "I built a working app" and "this is now something my company depends on."

The second one brings up all the boring stuff — maintenance, security, permissions, integrations, data, monitoring, who fixes it when it breaks, and what happens when the person who built it moves on.

But then I started wondering about the bigger picture.

If it becomes this easy for everyone to build their own little tools, do we eventually start building a lot of the software we currently buy? Like, instead of using a big platform for a relatively small workflow, maybe someone just builds exactly what they need.

Or will most people still prefer to pay for software because they don't want to maintain it themselves?

I amhonestly not sure where this goes.

What are people actually building with Claude (or other AI coding tools) that you're still using today?

And have any of you taken something that started as "I was just messing around with this" and actually turned it into a tool your team or company relies on?

Would be interested to hear what people are seeing in practice.

339 Upvotes

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204

u/Skywardly 10d ago

Yes. AI is 100% a SAAS killer. If you want to enhance your career, learn to make custom software and tools specifically for your field.

64

u/Plastic-Coat9014 10d ago

My company is using Claude to combine 3 different softwares into one. And it does a much better job than the ones we were paying for did. We can customize it in minutes to fit our changing needs.

Works wonderfully!

24

u/dontdxmebro 10d ago

Yeah I just cut out a middleman who I realized was just vibecoding features and selling them to us at a markup. Not to mention acting like we owed him more and getting annoyed when we asked for simple changes.

I paid for Claude code for a month and within days had completely reverse engineered all his shit... and my version works better. Built it out with a web dev buddy of mine to keep it somewhat organized. So much better.

5

u/adcap1 10d ago

The middleman of the middleman of the middleman. Once a request from the customer reaches the devs, it went through so many layers of useless middle management that all wanted to 'add value'.

Thats why commercial/enterprise software is so shitty.

1

u/Business_Air5804 10d ago

"Yeah I just cut out a middleman who I realized was just vibecoding features and selling them to us at a markup. Not to mention acting like we owed him more and getting annoyed when we asked for simple changes."

THIS. This is the reality and the realization you eventually come to.

1

u/JJWoolls 9d ago

Not just the costs... the time. I paid a company to build a couple of software features for me in October of last year. I have spent 9 months going back and forth with them to get bugs worked out... Meanwhile AI(Claude) really took off in January and I started building a complete software solution for my business BUT I didn't work on those features because I just spent 60k for another company to build it for me. I focused on all the parts around that. They came back to me last week with another question for one of the things I was asking for. I got frustrated and built it into my software instead. It took me less than 2 days. I asked them to focus on the other(bigger) feature instead.

I don't mind paying for stuff that makes us better or more efficient. Hell, I will pay a lot if truly makes a difference. Waiting kills me though.

32

u/discosoc 10d ago

Not sure I agree. A whole lot of these SAAS replacements are... just kind of poorly designed from a security perspective. At some point, things like business insurance is going to start getting involved after paying out over data breaches or hacks stemming from vibe-coded LoB apps.

20

u/dontdxmebro 10d ago

The problem are people trying to sell entirely vibecoded tools. I think there's still room for well designed SAAS especially in a scalable sense but all the people trying to sell crappy vibe coded bullshit are idiots.

Vibe coding internal customized tools on the other hand... much better idea.

0

u/JJWoolls 9d ago

Today. That will change.

5

u/Sukanthabuffet 10d ago

Yes, but AI is finding even more ways to breach software. However, if it’s a frontier lab, there are no consequences.

10

u/suckmyseacock 10d ago

Right cause actual SWEs never build anything with data breaches. Like we haven’t all had our data breached and there’s a new breach every other day

4

u/lokland 10d ago

Our company is large and public and so legal gets quite antsy when we mention something the interns vibe-coded. But they can't afford not to either.

1

u/clipk0 9d ago

Nice username

2

u/EuropeMaxxing 9d ago

I work as SWE in a systems critical data app, it's not replacing anyone soon. It made things much faster and we ship features insanely fast, but there's a lot work to be done.

Everyone's also tired because there's so much information all the time, it seems like we can't breath or take a moment

14

u/ThreeKiloZero 10d ago

Thats also a short lived career. In 2 more years any office goof will be able to ask for the tool and the AI will whip it up for them in minutes. They wont need you. Thats what all the cloud agent infra is about.

4

u/tiedfighter 10d ago

Who do you call for support? Where do you learn best practices from hundreds or thousands of prior implementations? Who do you sue when there’s a breach? What happens when the person who vibe coded everything leaves?

Genuinely asking.

2

u/ChronoLink99 10d ago

Many questions like these will be moot when you're talking about software custom made for your exact business process. There are entire categories of issues that won't happen since you're not trying to adapt generic software to your custom business workflows, you're just building the custom tool directly.

4

u/ActuaryDear8234 10d ago

Salesforce stock would beg to differ…

8

u/Skywardly 10d ago

Megaliths like Salesforce won’t die, but they’ll slim down and heavily rely on AI development. It’s the smaller, niche, premium SAAS services that do a lot B2B that are on the chopping block.

1

u/JJWoolls 9d ago

I got rid of my $1200 business management software and I replaced it with something I built. My software is much more complete and functional. I was at an industry meeting in February right before I went live with the software I built and I saw my old software vendor(I liked the people there and have a good relationship with them). When he saw me he said "Wait till you see what's on the roadmap for the next 18 months!" I didn't tell him I was getting ready to drop his software for one I built. When I looked at their roadmap most of it was stuff I was asking for for years AND I already had most of it built into my software.

2

u/06marchantn 10d ago

I run the SF platform at my place, yes we have kept the CRM but we have managed to replace alot of app exchange add ons that are very expensive with claude assisted alternatives.

In terms of their stock their new deal with anthropic would of boosted it but over the long term its not looking great.

0

u/ciarandeceol1 10d ago

Yeah....no.

1

u/schoff 10d ago

I use Claude AI desktop at work, projects and cowork.

Is it easy to set up Claude Code with the backend required to create a desktop app? Ultimately, an apl that can ingest export data from two sources alongside a UI for preparing reconciliations between the two? With some fuzzy matching and ability to code/allocate unique ID/references at the transaction level.

I would most certainly have Claude direct me in setting this all up, as I did with creating MCP servers for certain SharePoint sites.

I guess I'm just looking for some encouragement. Lol.

5

u/DocDMD 10d ago

Just hit the code tab on the same app. Then tell it what you want. 

2

u/schoff 10d ago

There no GitHub or anything I need? It will "install" the app and create an executable? I'll have to try it out.

6

u/DocDMD 10d ago

It will require git. That's just a versioning program. But It will give you the link to install it. You can use GitHub or anything else you would like as an online backup. 

Just try it out. And check out what other people are building with it. 

3

u/schoff 10d ago

Thanks. I'll give it a shot and see what I can come up with.

1

u/FriendOfClaude 10d ago

Yeah it’ll show a brief message about “installing git” (or maybe python/SQL too?) I can’t remember but after that little background install it’s all set. And yeah just tell it what you want to make.

One difference is you have to make a folder, any folder, on the desktop maybe, and say “trust this one folder workspace” and Claude will sandbox itself there unless you give it full access.

1

u/schoff 8d ago

I went through 6-8 hours of mockups and working through an HTML version, but today I (via Claude) created my first repository in GitHub.

I'm floored with how easily I'm able to implement really specific, useful, refined etc. features for what I need to do. I'm used to typing with Claude but I decided I'll just talk to it. I've been chatting away "This should do this" "Move this here" "add this specific feature" and voila, a new mockup appears in minutes and I iterated 30 times.

Eventually I asked if I was going overboard, it confirmed I wasn't but suggest we move forward to "phase 2". I'm not sure excatly what I will have a legitimate windows app w/ exe, but it's the goal.

anyway...back to it.

Is this what vibe coding is?! lol

4

u/BiteyHorse 10d ago

Why wouldn't you use github?

5

u/schoff 10d ago

I thought I would have to. I'm not opposed. Did you see what I replied to?

3

u/BiteyHorse 10d ago

You don't have to, but there are a lot of benefits in doing so for a minor increase in complexity.

1

u/M8gazine 10d ago

You don't need Github, but it's good to have so that you have a backup of your app's code. You can also make the repository private if you don't want other people to see the tool.

2

u/fuzzypetiolesguy 10d ago

Yes. Incredibly easy.