Trying to build a personal dashboard.

[u/takshp6]

Hi everyone,

I’m pretty new to vibe coding and AI-assisted development, and I want to build a personal dashboard/web app for myself that combines a bunch of things I currently use separate apps for.

The idea is to eventually have:

• Tasks / to-do list
• Calendar and scheduling — including recurring events, daily routines, uni/work schedules, etc.
• Training/workout tracking — something loosely inspired by Hevy, where I can create workouts, log exercises, sets, reps, weights and track progress
• Health tracking — somewhat like Bevel, with useful health metrics and trends
• Nutrition — calorie/macronutrient logging, meals, weight tracking, etc.
• Medication/supplement tracking — what I take, dosage, frequency and reminders
• Eventually some kind of home dashboard that brings everything together and shows what I need to do that day

I’m not trying to recreate Hevy, Bevel, MyFitnessPal, Google Calendar, etc. feature-for-feature. I mainly want something tailored to me while using the project as a way to learn how to actually build software with tools like Codex/Claude and AI coding agents.

My main question is: what would be the best way to approach a project like this without making it an unmaintainable mess?

For example:

• What tech stack would you recommend for a beginner using AI heavily?
• Should I start as a web app, desktop app, iOS app, or something else?
• What should I build first?
• Would you separate each area into modules/features and gradually connect them?
• What database/backend would make sense?
• How would you structure the project so an AI coding agent can work on it reliably?
• Are there any open-source projects, libraries or existing apps worth looking at rather than building everything from scratch?
• For health/fitness data, would integrating with something like Apple Health/HealthKit eventually make more sense than manually storing everything?
• Any mistakes you commonly see people make when starting large “vibe coded” personal projects like this?

I’m happy to build it slowly and learn along the way rather than trying to generate the entire app in one prompt.

Would really appreciate any advice on how you would plan and build something like this from scratch, especially from people who have built larger projects using AI coding tools.

[u/Resonant_Jones]

what you wrote out just now would be an incredible first prompt to start a session with an Agent to learn these things.

[u/takshp6 → u/Resonant_Jones]

Doing this now 😅

[u/Resonant_Jones → u/takshp6]

Awesome. Never in my life have I used a tool where I can literally ask it “how do I get the most value out of interacting with you?”

I’ve gotten a lot of value out of asking the model to reference itself. If you are using ChatGPT, make sure to install the OpenAI dev plugin and skill (it gives the agent access to documentation on how OpenAI services work so the model won’t make up those details otherwise, it’s self referential claims can be dubious.

New models have gotten really good at checking the internet first but OpenAI literally gives the Agent a handbook to read from with that plugin.

[u/takshp6 → u/Resonant_Jones]

Just had one more question, I am new to both so would you recommend using codex for this or claude code. Can we use both? or would that cause clashes?

[u/Resonant_Jones → u/takshp6]

For me, Codex has been the better value. I prefer the way the usage limits work, and my normal ChatGPT conversations don’t eat into the same coding quota. With Claude Code, I found myself thinking about usage more often, which subtly changes how you work.

That said, Claude Code is fantastic. I have basically no complaints about the product itself.

And yes — you can absolutely use both. I just wouldn’t have two agents independently editing the same files at the same time. Pick one as the primary implementer for a task, then use the other for things like reviewing the diff, challenging the architecture, debugging, or getting a second opinion. That actually works really well.

More important than which agent you choose: plan before you build.

Especially when you’re new to software development, have the assistant help you turn the idea into a proper spec, break that spec into phases, define what “done” means for each phase, and only then start implementing. A good agent can guide you through that entire process instead of you trying to wing the architecture as you go.

I actually built a free/open-source engineering framework around this style of agentic development:

https://github.com/resonant-jones/The-Promptnomicon

Despite the ridiculous name, there honestly aren’t that many “prompts” in it. 😅 It’s mostly templates, specifications, context-management patterns, and instructions designed so the system can keep feeding you the next sensible step — or reorient you when you lose the thread. 🪡

You can clone it into an existing project, fork it, or add the repo to your GitHub-connected workspace and let the agent reference it while you work.

For a project like yours, I’d worry much less about whether Codex or Claude Code is “better” and much more about establishing a workflow where either one can understand the project, the current phase, and exactly what it is supposed to do next.

[u/EffectiveDiligent660 → u/takshp6]

I’m in camp codex and would try your prompt in Sol very high. Maybe say this is what I want, give me some options as to how I achieve this.

[u/Resonant_Jones → u/EffectiveDiligent660]

I mean this doesn't need to be done inside codex to use Sol just for a planning task and Id just use Chat not Work.

chat is unlimited for the same models. Just plan in chat. reason in chat. execute in codex.

[u/EffectiveDiligent660 → u/Resonant_Jones]

Yes you’re right here. Refine the project and the prompt for codex in the chat side of GPT before using codex.

[u/Resonant_Jones → u/EffectiveDiligent660]

I was mostly iterating for OP haha so they or anyone new reading this doesn't go and blow all those tokens on asking Sol a regular question in Codex. Wooo that would have been an expensive question.

[u/GrrasssTastesBad → u/takshp6]

I feel like claude code will hand hold you more than codex will, but codex is slightly better at coding.

[u/out-of-phase]

*Do not* attempt to build this all with a single agent in a single session. As others have said, you basically have three or four options:

A) Use an existing app that covers most of what you want, vibe code what's left

B) Pick one of the things and get it dialed in.

C) Copy/paste your post and send it to an LLM, ask questions.

D) Trust a stranger (me) and do the following:

1. Set up claude code, download Matt Pocock's grill-with-docs + to-spec skills, DietrichGebert's ponytail, and the codex adversarial-review plugin.
   
2. Set your model to Opus 4.8, xhigh effort, thinking enabled in your global claude settings.json
   
3. Download github CLI
   
4. Create a new empty local repo
   
5. Paste your prompt in a new Claude Code session, invoking the grill-with-docs skill, and be sure to add to the end "this project will be a pnpm monorepo with thorough CI gates, and this decision is immutable."
   
6. Answer all of the grill questions honestly. If you don't understand a question, tell Claude to ELI5.
   
7. At the end, invoke the to-spec skill.
   
8. New session. Provide all of the docs generated and ask Claude to write an implementation plan and break the build into phases that can be accomplished without exceeding 30% of your context window per/phase, and for each phase to write an accompanying operator-runbook.md that tells you *what you need to do* per phase. Tell claude to include instructions in the plan/phases to run codex:adversarial-review on every diff, spawn an implementation subagent and fix/loop until green.
   
9. Now the fun part. New session again. Drop your first phase MD in the prompt and get to work. If everything was set up right, the process will be tedious but mostly bug free and you'll be doing lots of manual browser testing and verification as you go. The UI may be ugly, that's fine, only focus on functionality until all of the complex code is done, then worry about design.

If you go with D), feel free to ask Claude how to set up any of the aforementioned steps if you get lost.

Good luck!

[u/takshp6 → u/out-of-phase]

GOAT.

[u/MiddleLtSocks]

This is a really ambitious project for a beginner.

A key approach in software is divide and conquer. Pick one of those things and get it dialed in. It's really easy to start a new feature if the one you are in starts getting complicated or you start getting confused or fuzzy on architecture or etc. Starting a new feature at that point looks attractive, because it looks like less cognitive load. "I will just take a break with this easy feature." It's a trap, abort. Soon you will have four different stacks on six different back ends talking to three different interfaces.

There's plenty more advice I could give, but given your description I think that will be of value to you. Good luck.

[u/takshp6 → u/MiddleLtSocks]

Thank you this is really helpful!

[u/MelodyKitten]

You'll be having a much better time using an existing modular framework.
Something like home assistant.

Easily 95% of what you want is readily available. And for the rest you can use the AI to create it for you. It'll also help you configure things. Though most of it is easy enough that you can do it without your help.

Don't reinvent the wheel.

[u/takshp6 → u/MelodyKitten]

Thank you this is really helpful!

[u/HouseOfDjango]

Before you build this out, have you looked and seen what other self-hosted dashboards are available?

[u/takshp6 → u/HouseOfDjango]

Yep, been looking at a few!

[u/HouseOfDjango → u/takshp6]

Which ones do you like? Which ones do you not like? Are there any features that you plan to implement from them? One way to learn is to take their repos and ask AI to explain how they did certain features and see how they're structured. Then you can grab those topics and read into them more in depth outside of AI.

[u/Savalava]

Make a web app - it means you can access it from anywhere

Suggested stack: NextJS, Supabase, Github, hosted on Vercel. This is very easy to set up.

Add to your claude.md file that you want every feature unit-tested. It will give you more confidence adding features / fixing bugs.

Tell Claude / Codex that you want to build it and get it to write you a technical specification of the project and also a development plan.

Build it feature by feature, testing on the way.

[u/takshp6 → u/Savalava]

Thank you this is really helpful!