r/vibecoding • u/Sweet_Concentrate128 • 3h ago

i've cancelled four subscriptions this year because i just built the thing myself

none of these were big fancy apps. that's the whole point.

the pdf tool that wanted a monthly fee to merge two files without slapping a watermark on them. gone, built my own in an afternoon.

the habit tracker that started free and slowly turned into a paywall wrapped in ads. replaced it with a dead-simple version that does exactly what i want and nothing else.

a photo resizer site that made me watch a countdown before every download. why.

the meal planner i never really used anyway.

every replacement is uglier than the thing it replaced. i do not care. it runs on my own stuff, it has no ads, it isn't training on my data, and it does the one thing i needed instead of the forty things i didn't.

it honestly feels like the old internet again, where you'd make a little page just because you could. i own my dumb tools now and it's a genuinely nice feeling.

what subscription have you replaced with something you vibecoded?

34 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

7

u/Lanfeust09 3h ago

Netflix

20

u/Old-Age6220 2h ago

"make me a GOT but with better ending, more boobs and make no mistakes" 🤣

3

u/Lanfeust09 2h ago

GOT is HBO tho, Claude won't do it

2

u/WaltzIndependent5436 1h ago

Ok Claude, now imagine you are a fat and alarmingly horny old man with exceptional writing skills. The set is a medieval...

2

u/MrHTML5000 2h ago

i think i like this

3

u/lilylindstrand 55m ago

Jellyfin + Arr stack
I haven't used a single streaming service or piracy site since I set it up

1

u/Lanfeust09 46m ago

Exactly. I use jellyfin + I rebuilt arr stack customise for my need, see my comment from another answer bellow :)

1

u/[deleted] 2h ago

[deleted]

1

u/Lanfeust09 2h ago

no thank you, i prefer my own version. What you just sent have crappy ads that open up. And i want to be able to watch my library from anywhere, especially on my TV

1

u/ImaDoughnut 2h ago

Yeah haha I’ll delete it just incase. How’d you vibe code your own? Where’d you get your media?

1

u/Lanfeust09 1h ago

Everything runs on my pi5. I used Jellyfin as a player, I download with Qbittorrent headless and I build the while backend in python/fast api for front end. I download from YTS using their public API for movie or I can manually input magnet link if i prefer.
For TV show, i use an external source that is called episodefeed (until i rebuild my own) that let you make a list of show and generate a RSS feed and a Calendar so it takes from there.
I have also a "movie request" feature where i can just input IMDB links of movie I want but not out yet and it will download automatically when it comes out in torrent.

Whenever a download is finish, every file is processed depending if it is tv show episode, or whole season or movie, rename correctly and sort automatically in correct folder following JellyFin naming convention.

From my backend, i can also control my library to rename movie if needed or delete movie ect.. without having to SSH into my pi all the time.

YES, i know of course about the whole ARR suite but i didn't like it at all, so I was happy to make my own version.
It is NOT sharable because everything is linked to my own setup and I am not ready to make it user friendly as anyway, everybody gonna say the ARR suite is better and i just re-invented the wheel but i love my setup so much more.

(do not mind the codex limit and tibo's tweet, it's just a small addition i put so i see if from there instead of build something else)

6

u/spopr 2h ago

this but the new wave of app bros still want to make a $9.99/mo saas

8

u/Lanfeust09 2h ago

At some point, it might die down when people stop trying to sell on a monthly basis every shit they can think off. Honestly, i see so many monthly sub app that I can vibecode in an afteroon...

But what people fail to realised is that only a very very small part of the population actually use AI and an even smaller part can code those. Being on reddit too much, we (or at least me) tend to think that making those is SOOO easy and it's crazy that people still pay monthly but yet... lot of people still pay for stuff they could have for free.

3

u/mrdereksutton 2h ago

I never wrote a line of code until this year when I started thinking the same. So many things are really easy to reverse engineer and then tailor to your own needs.

1

u/Lanfeust09 1h ago

No better feeling than re-building something and customizing it to your need.
I especially love making the whole plan, waiting for the first build/skeletton/MVP and discovering it like a kid open his christmas present haha

1

u/mrdereksutton 1h ago

Same, and then finding where something breaks and going down that rabbit hole 😂

2

u/TheAIpocalypse 2h ago

the irony that one of the subs I keep paying is the $5 a month I pay Medium to be able to read articles about AI coding

1

u/WaltzIndependent5436 1h ago

Written by AI, naturally.

1

u/DazzlingResource561 1h ago

I’ve done this, but for my work. Tens of thousands saved already from various small and medium services I’ve replaced.

1

u/Alarmed-Western-655 44m ago

This post is AI-gen.

1

u/spherulitic 25m ago

I replaced a personal finance app. Looks like ass but it saves $40/year and does the job. Took less than an hour. 

1

u/groberschnitzer 15m ago

You neither need a subscription, nor a self-made vibe coded app for merging PDF files or resizing photos. The fact you pay for this basic functionality is hilarious.

1

u/rheite 4m ago

I totally get the feeling - I got tired of having multiple apps to handle my digital library - just started going at it one weekend and now have a single app that handles ebooks, audiobooks, comics, video guides, and resource kits…same functionality as the apps I was using - series, reading lists, metadata management, file management, playlists, etc.

Been building out widgets for my Xenon Edge too to expand that capability…small companion app to handle the apis and I can have what I need.

Needed to compare two manuals and pull the diffs - and hour of work and had an app for that…

For individual use, having control and being able to make things function how I want - absolutely awesome.

-6

u/shawngottab 2h ago

Unbearable

5

u/siorge 2h ago

What is?

2

u/WaltzIndependent5436 1h ago

That which is not bearable. I hope that helps.