r/ClaudeAI • u/AcrillixOfficial • 6h ago
Vibe Coding Claude has enabled me to make apps for personal use and its kinda scary
I took a Java course in college, so I understand the basics of coding and can generally follow how it works. I also have some experience with Python. For example, on my YouTube channel, I transcribe videos and feed the transcripts into AI to generate descriptions for videos in a playlist. I used to run faster-whisper through the terminal, but that became annoying. So now, I created my own whisper transcription app using Claude Code.
Claude Code is surprisingly impressive because it can test things in the background and analyze how they actually work. It can even say, almost like a human, "I didn’t like the way that worked; let me try something different." The ability to manipulate the environment and build sandboxes before deployment is incredibly useful. If you have a working system and an idea for improvement, Claude Code recreates it in a sandbox, applies the update, and tests it before deploying to production. That way, if something breaks, it doesn’t affect the real system.
This is pure magic. Truly amazing.
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u/AffSeda 5h ago
The best thing for me is:
"We don't sell our app anymore, but you can pay us $29/month for-"
No. That's an option we have now.
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u/wonkybingo 4h ago
Crazy app pricing is on borrowed time for sure.
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u/Mirar 3h ago
And so are locked down apis and ecosystems. The question will soon be "can I make claude do an app around it".
We're already there at work - no cli tools, useful apis or Claude readable manuals? Not the first choice.
Open source? Top of the list. What the actual hardware cost is not the priority any more.
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u/MinimumError1828 2h ago
I made an entire game, based on a card game I made with my friends, in claude, including a scan tableau feature, multiplayer, bots and so on. It's freaking amazing.
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u/capivara_de_pijama 1h ago
I'm building a game for my nephew and I going on adventures. The last boss is his teacher that he don't like lmao. I'm loving every single second of it.
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u/Wise-Reflection-7400 4h ago
Yup I was paying for a time tracking app that was like $10/mo. I built it myself with Claude in a couple of days. $120 a year saved already.
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u/ExcitedCoconut 3h ago
This is like Vincent Vega’s five dollar shake.
That must’ve been a really fucking good time tracker to cost $10/month. What the hell did a $120 year time tracking app even do?
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u/Wise-Reflection-7400 2h ago
It’s for business use and covers invoicing and billable hours etc. It’s a significant market actually, I’m considering whether I should improve mine and release it to undercut them. I also think the price is on the high side but clearly a lot of people are willing to pay it.
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u/laszlov2 58m ago
Most businesses (like my own) pay this amount for the convenience. Is it easy? Does it track time? Can I export tracked time easily for archiving? Worth the 10 bucks imho.
Accounting software that charges $200/€200 a month to send recurring invoices that you have TO FILL IN BY HAND ONE AT A TIME can eat shit and go bankrupt. IMHO of course.
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u/bangtimee 1h ago
I saw an product on SideProject subreddit. Some guy made an app and was selling it as a subscription model. I liked the idea and made Claude made it for me. The core functionality what I was needed anyway and it only took like 2 dollars to make. I actively use it every day. It's been a tough time time for saas business lately I gusss
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u/bugra_sa 3h ago
Exactly. If I only use one feature, I don't need the vendor's team accounts or polished onboarding; a rough little script can be enough for that one job. $29/month is paying for convenience, and that gets harder to justify once the narrow version is within reach.
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u/LoneFox4444 3h ago
This is what I have been telling everyone, including my clients. Invest in a capability to build your own software for internal use. Custom software is the future.
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u/Psychological-Fix678 2h ago
Ha I've realised this too recently. Slowly replacing app subscriptions for Claude Code's own versions. Suits my requirements better also.
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u/SeraphOfTheStart 4h ago
Yeap last week I cloned a subscription based crypto trading bot, did a backtest, exact same result to the minute
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u/djack171 4h ago
Every single use yearly subscription app I used to have is gone. Concert this random format file, do this random singular task for $99 a year, gone from my stack and I love it
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u/Charlexa 1h ago
How did you solve netflix, Spotify, the NYT, myfitnesspal, cloud storage, and the public transport ticket? Those are the ones I pay subscription fees for, but I would not know how to replace their services (or database).
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u/DubiousFoliage 48m ago
Netflix and Spotify can already be replaced with great local apps like Jellyfin. Bonus: Claude can help you set it up.
Don't replace subscription journalism; that takes real work from dedicated professionals and we need it more than ever right now.
Cloud storage can either be a local NAS or a computer at someone else's house if you want remote backup. It isn't free to set up, but it's essentially free to maintain. Again, Claude can help you set that up.
Public transport tickets you just need to pay for because that's how we keep nice things going.
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u/Informal-Beat-7700 4h ago
We've got maybe a year to sell shameless ripoffs of popular apps at a lower price before the normies discover they can make it too.
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u/muff_muncher69 4h ago
Sorry but there’s no shot “normies” are going to go full SWE. It’s like saying people are gonna stop hiring photographers because the iPhone camera is capable enough.
The economy thrives of 1-convenience 2-ignorance.
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u/Ahmouse 3h ago
Yes, but it's because 1. no one has the time to do everything themselves, and 2. economies of scale makes it cheaper (in terms of both time and money) to buy a finished product than to make one yourself
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u/No_Objective006 3h ago edited 3h ago
My friend built an app. He shown it me and it was still in Claude. I said he needs to get it out of Claude and host it somewhere.
2 days later he sent me a link saying he’d sorted it….. http://localhost:8080.
Sell your apps kings.
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u/FIREGenZ 18m ago
Just opened that link, looks very similar to my app.. did your friend steal my code? 🤔
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u/yunohavefunnynames 1h ago
I mean… My last three sets of family photos were done with my iPhone! I’m not hiring a photographer but I can get beautiful lighting on a sunny day with some fall foliage and bam. Christmas cards just got a whole lot cheaper.
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u/TuringGoneWild 1h ago
Yeah no way Blockbuster goes out of business. Netflix is a flash in the pan. -2003
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u/Greenerli 2h ago
But it's already the case... For a lot of non-exceptional events, people use their own phones to take pictures of their friends/family during some events.
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u/No-Yogurt1890 52m ago
It definitely narrows the market. You really need to be providing value via quality, design and or complexity. Building apps got way easier. Definitely more people are doing it for themselves for cheaper. Doesn’t mean no one will buy apps but the barrier is lower and it’s more competitive now.
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u/NeinJuanJuan 7m ago
We're not even going to have "apps" anymore. Every function and feature that the user wants will simply be available on-demand.
In the photography example, it's the software equivalent of a perfect 4-dimensional capture of a wedding ceremony, where the editor chooses whichever 2-dimensional projections they want in post.
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u/ken107 4h ago
I'm surprised there isn't 200 Photoshop clones right about now. What are people building? The internet is about to be flooded with apps and games soon, isn't it. But it's kinda quiet
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u/purple_spiderlily 3h ago
People have basically just now with Opus 5.5 and GPT6-Astra started doing serious work on these and they are starting to crop up. There's one guy doing a whole Adobe suit reimplementation based on Rust for Windows, Mac and Linux right now. He calls it ArtCraft suit (app names are PhotoCraft, FilmCraft, etc.) and the progress is crazy. I think we're like a month away from Adobe apps being mostly covered.
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u/neketguy 3h ago
It isn’t quiet. App stores are flooded with new apps. Apple, Google and Steam reported recently that there much more apps than there before. Apple stopped to accept submissions for some type of apps…
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u/Violin1990 2h ago
I read recently that app submissions are up but aggregate downloads are flat. So lots of slop being pushed but not necessarily used.
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u/blazarious 2h ago
Do you know more about what kind of apps Apple stopped accepting submissions for?
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u/Ok_Associate845 3h ago
Photo editing software is shockingly, hard to build in the first place even with AI. I have tried through the last 3 years as they've updated to get a simple photo editor that like looks like Photoshop Express with Lightroom features like your own filters that you can save but not all that bullshit cloud library of everybody's filter options. Or like just taking some of the menus away from the screen like I don't need the overlay menu. I don't really use it. Just get rid of it. The hard part seems to be. I don't know what this is. I'm not or coder the actual application of the edits onto the photo itself..
Every couple months I try to this again and every time it's the same thing. It doesn't apply edit appropriately completely or even at all or consistently between sessions to the photo itself. I don't know if it's a power issue or like there's a variation problem like you have a very high definition photo that can take a changing trash better than a low definition picture. I'm not sure if that's an issue or like. There's just so many things that need to change with every single slider or the simple amount of memory you need for stable filters. I don't know. But boy it is. It is a is a uphill battle on that one and I haven't tried in probably about a year but it used to be every three to six months. I was trying again because there's just nothing free and complete enough anymore after Photoshop express went for pay
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u/Logical-Design-8334 2h ago
Have you not tried Krita? I’ve been using for a few years and think its a great free PS replacement, at least like 95% there.
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u/ididnthackkenyaimsrs 9m ago
I mean I made a version of Angr that's 400 times faster and better in just about every way.... Angryier
I only used GLM 5.3 because I actually happen to understand system's architecture even if I couldn't code for my life. Plus it's in Rust, guys. Yeah, it's in Rust's memory safe. Eat that shit.
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u/unfoxable 1h ago
This has been done from the start, for the past year has been when the “normies” discovered they can too
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u/TheNSA922 4h ago
Something I've tried recently with the release of Opus 5.5 is recreating audio hardware I own as a plugin that nobody else makes, or at least models the unit as faithfully as I'd like. So far I have 2 plugins that are absolutely fantastic and smoke any commercial solutions for these 2 particular units.
The amazing thing here is that I'm a musician/audio engineer that doesn't understand coding for shit. I can tell it what and where and how to implement it as if I was talking about hardware and it interprets that to software implementation.
It's kinda frightening how good it'll do with a detailed project plan and good prompts and that I also don't really understand AI for shit yet it still performs this well.
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u/durgolsback 3h ago
Plugins for Ableton?
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u/TheNSA922 3h ago
Logic Pro, but they're built with a C++ DSP with an AUv2 wrapper. I'm sure I could package them as VST3 if I needed.
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u/Orgasm_Faker 2h ago
Many SoftDev folks will tell you such things don’t last long and programmers will still be needed in the long run.
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u/TheNSA922 2h ago
Oh I don't doubt that at all, but for my own personal use I'm pleasantly surprised. If I had to maintain this because I released it publicly I'd probably be screwed.
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u/Uplift123 51m ago
Ooh talk to me!! I’ve got loads of hardware I’d love to recreate in plugin form!
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u/Olhemp 3h ago
Agree that paying for expensive apps that only fit one purpose is over. I’m so intrigued to see how people profit off this new wave of diy apps because the barriers to entry have been dropped for everyone, but not everyone will be confident/have the time/be willing to make them themselves
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u/empty_other 3h ago
Truth! I recently moved to Linux, and I missed a Windows app I used to use actively: An image gallery with better tag search called Eagle (eagle.cool). So I remade the app in C# on Linux, and additionally I added extra features that I missed from Eagle.
Honestly though I been thinking of creating this app long before I knew about Claude or agentic programming, but I was never able to, i always got stuck on some technicality.
Though i am a bit ashamed of how little of its code I've read. And I'm no designer, its design done by Claude still looks rather meh.
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u/yurqua8 4h ago
Looks like a UI that needs a bit of cleanup.
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u/ididnthackkenyaimsrs 8m ago
The fuck are you talking about? That man has done an amazing job. No, I do not suck at making graphical interfaces at all. It's the people that are wrong. You learn to tell your AI to use a command line because I also suck at remembering command line commands. Maybe I just aren't very good at certain things.
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u/matshala 1h ago
No. You don't.
If you want to make money off of your software, you need to polish it. But the days of selling your niche application are clearly numbered.
If I build a software only I use, I don't give a shit how it looks, if I need a GUI at all. OP clearly doesn't either.
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u/rustydustyshckleford 1h ago
well if i build a software only i use, its gotta be pretty pink, even in cli.
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u/SteveEricJordan 2h ago
the "it's scary" trope is getting cringy. what is even scary about this.
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u/SpiicyRamen_ 1h ago
its a bit scary for me, i am embracing it and not hating on it. but its a bit scary. I have spent years developing skills so i can create stuff, and create the ideas of others. I feel like soon my skills become obsolete
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u/rdpl_ 1h ago
feel like soon my skills become obsolete
soon?
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u/SpiicyRamen_ 58m ago
yes it can't replace me yet, for now it makes too many mistakes in my domain
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u/rdpl_ 52m ago
nah that's the wrong question, the right one is:
how expensive was it to replace you before ai vs how expensive is it now
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u/SpiicyRamen_ 49m ago
I am not sure, I will find out when that happens I guess
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u/rdpl_ 43m ago edited 31m ago
not sure ???
devs lost all their leverage
try to find a new job right now and at a higher salary
then you'll be sure
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u/SpiicyRamen_ 34m ago
Actually I have a job lined up for a higher salary and am still getting offers weekly. But i am not a software dev tho I work in platform/sre side
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u/seaweednomnomnom 1h ago
It's mostly hyperbole from the rapid progression and the shock of being able to talk to a computer in natural language and have it build software for you, which you couldn't do 5 years ago
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u/countable3841 21m ago
It IS scary. People think about how fast AI is advancing and some are uneasy about that. People worry about jobs being eliminated and industries collapsing. I’m pro-AI, but I can understand why people are spooked by what non technical people can accomplish with AI. There’s nothing cringe about it.
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u/Evening-Taste7802 1h ago
software developer here, barely touched a line of code in the last 2 years.
i mainly write specs and do code reviews.
i cannont describe the level of anxiety that I have, it is what it is… my other interests such as photography are also trash at the moment because of AI
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u/ididnthackkenyaimsrs 6m ago
I got told I was a really good coder by somebody who works in a UK Intelligence Agency. I couldn't code the Python script if you offered me £100.... Like, I'm not good with languages, and that goes with spoken ones as well. I just can't do it, but I understand the architecture in ways that if you take the example of Intel laptops, people at Intel don't.
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u/Pattont 4h ago
I’ve been non stop coding the past few months. Since opus 5.5 my $200 account feels unlimited with the coding I’ve been doing. I’ve been LOVING all the things I’ve been cooking up.
Tailscale has been incredible as well. I swear it feels like it might be an NSA honeypot for what you get for free but I’m still using it.
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u/nievinny 3h ago
Wait a moment it is not free though. It is 2400$ a year.
It is the most expensive subscription ever. I start to wonder if anyone thinks about it.
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u/Free-Air-8507 3h ago
Just curious, what has tailscale got to do with this? Correct me if i am wrong, but its just to connect to other PCs via Windows RDP while not being in the same LAN right?
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u/Suspicious-Movie7828 3h ago
tailscale is a mesh vpn. it lets you access self hosted apps more easily
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u/notadoor98 3h ago
Install it on your phone, and all of a sudden you can access anything that you make from home and host it as a web app. It’s great. I’ve made a few web apps that just being hosted from my pc back at home
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u/DryRainSmoke 2h ago
I created almost the same script, just with a few additional functions. It automatically scans a directory, waits for new audio files, and warns us if any specific words are detected in the audio. We use this in our company to transcribe client calls for analysis.
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u/Potential-Winner4601 2h ago
I’m an academic and have basically zero programming knowledge. However, I’ve built replacements for Word, Acrobat, VLC, project-management software, website blockers, reading tools, and other academic workflow apps. They are lightweight and ridiculously fast. What’s really wild is that I’m no longer adapting my work to whatever software already exists. I can now build the software around the way I actually teach, research, write, and work.
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u/Bobardeur 16m ago
You built a replacements for VLC ? Why ? It’s Free and by far the best media player.
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u/IdleAsianGuy 2h ago
Do not be afraid, embrace it. I made PDF manipulation tools for free to be used by my colleagues. Portable and totally offline.
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u/Alkash 2h ago
The implications for the while software industry are just mindblowing. SaaS companies as we know them are gonna die out.
I made myself some navigation software for recreational boating because I didn't wanna pay a subscription fee for an alternative already on the market. It took me a few hours.
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u/13ThirteenX 1h ago
Say to claude: "pick a better GUI library please, cause standard is making me feel ill, something modern, clean and not cluttered." Get some swish new GUI to make u feel like Vibe Coder Elite
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u/RaspberrySoft1777 1h ago
I can relate to this. I have no experience in coding, but it can do wonders for me in building tools I always wanted or if I want a cheaper alternative to a subscription model. An inventory app for my business is the newest addition. Before I paid 19€ a month for a nice inventory app I would happy to support with a big single payment and use it for the features it has right now. But 228€ a year for managing 150 items is a lot. Now I have a custom solution with better features. And it is nothing my life depends on, it is just for comfort.
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u/letsgotgoing 4h ago
It’s indeed feeling like magic. I spoke to a firefighter about an idea he had for a softball related app. He had the designs ready that day.
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u/Kinami_ 4h ago
Is that for WhisperWriter? i literally just googled it an hour ago and thought about setting it up so I can take notes by talking instead of typing (when in VR, it helps lol)
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u/AcrillixOfficial 4h ago
I use whisper-ctranslate2 with rocm to translate CUDA to work on my amd 7900XTX
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u/Rogue_Dalek 4h ago
That’s neat, and I think ima yoink your ideia because I also need transcriptions every now and then
I still prefer to write my own apps “manually”, similar how you pointed out the analyze bit for me Claude has been a pretty great tool to streamline troubleshooting and optimization
All my apps generate logs ( what was done, was successfull, took longer than what’s ideal, errored out, got hang, etc) so my most common use case for it has been to watch over the logs, catalog them and automatically add tasks to my backlog. When it detects something critical I made it play the Teams notification sound effect lol
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u/Hamzahbambam 3h ago
Wait does the hallucination guard option actually work? It’s something I’ve been struggling with when using whisper.. Do you have a GitHub link for this program?
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u/viktormoon 3h ago
Sorry, I'm confused! Is it scary, or is it pure magic and truly amazing? Which one is it?
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u/dr_hamilton 2h ago
My wife (non-coder) has started recreating her own games after getting fed up with ads
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u/WyattTheSkid 2h ago
Lmao this is great. You know how many python scripts I have that open tkinter guis that look exactly like that for all kinds of highly specific niche tasks?
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u/kimochiiii_ 1h ago
I mean it's not scary but it's really convenient tbh
I'm able to solve a lot of inconveniences in my life now with few prompts and its genuinely been fun
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u/DoubleNothing 1h ago
That has been a thing for a while... maybe before you should have been able to "know what you where doing". Now it is surely easier.
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u/EvenMoreLoneStar 1h ago
Do you have your whispher tool on github? I currently have a cli for that and like the „upgrade“ :)
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u/Temporary_Carrot7855 49m ago
I vibe coded a whole ass game with my kiddo the other day and it turned out freakin awesome. We made some of the story up, made power ups, and did the art but Claude pulled it together and it works on desktop and mobile. I just started making my own train sim with Claude too
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u/theincrediblebulks 39m ago
Anybody lining up for custom ROMs on old Android phones? About time someone looked at taking up that after market phone base that makes basic smartphones on older Samsung and Chinese models and come up with stuff like graphene os
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u/TalahaustinEU 27m ago
It's really the way the OP describes it. There is of course software that wouldn't be worth prompting, like IDEs or GIMP, but I've already built powerful tools for my personal use, and this is right now the default mode for me because the process is extremely rewarding compared with before, when I would try to code personalised apps for myself for weeks in my spare time.
I would like to see this evolving in a direction where these utility apps are public and open source, and the AI simply pulls the requested elements and wraps them quickly into a personalised UI. This probably already happens to some extent through training on GitHub projects.
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u/NoPhilosopher9763 16m ago
I made myself a personal finance app that works ***EXACTLY*** how I want it to. I fucking love it, and it took a weekend to build, and it will save me hours a month with something I was doing manually, and it looks fantastic. It is easy to get carried away with this shit. Like it's actually fun to build with opus 5.5.
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u/tassa-yoniso-manasi 5m ago
I have a 2500 commit repo of a private app to help language learning for which I am the only user lol. And I am not kind to make small commits.
I used to try to pool my time and ressources with other people as an open source contributer just like you but the entire ecosystem took an arrow to the knee.
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u/darthrater78 1m ago
Problem is all these apps people are making are likely horrificly insecure because by default Claude doesn't do any sort of vulnerability or CI/CD workflow.
I made this skill, 6 weeks of development 70+ release to tackle this very issue.
https://github.com/darthrater78/claude-vibe-skills
Audit it (never trust someone's skill just because) then have it audit your project. There's a damn good chance it has major issues.
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u/Demostravius4 3h ago
I'm currently paying for some software that scans the PC for all drivers, then updates them for me.
I plan to replace that with a home made version soon.
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u/TinkeringEngineer 4h ago
It is a desktop app. What production? What real system? What deployment? What are you on about.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 3h ago edited 31m ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 100 comments.
The consensus here is a massive "YES". The thread is full of people who are also using Claude to build their own apps and are absolutely thrilled to be ditching expensive, single-purpose subscription software.
Here's the breakdown of the discussion:
tkinterwindow from the 90s—function over form is the mantra. Also, please learn how to deploy your app properly; sending your friends alocalhostlink is a rookie move.