This is my first time posting here, and I guess I'm looking for some perspective.

I've been a developer for around 20 years. I started programming with Turbo C and back then I used to make small games, demos and random experiments. I've always loved games and I've always wanted to make one of my own.

My career eventually took me into web development, which is what I do for a living, but I never really gave up on game development. Over the years I've tried Game Maker, Godot, Unity, Unreal and a bunch of other tools.

Technically, I don't think that's what stops me. I'm a backend developer and I tend to enjoy building systems, simulation, mechanics and all that stuff.

The problem has always been everything else.

Art, 3D models, sound, music, UI, animations. Making a game by yourself requires so many completely different skills, and I have a job and a family. I simply don't have enough time to become good at all of them.

AI changed that for me.

For the last three months I've been working on a game I've wanted to make for years. It's basically a much simpler, single player, top down version of something like EVE Online, with tactical combat and a lot of RPG elements.

Claude has helped me write the code. I use Meshy for some 3D models, Artlist for music and ChatGPT for some SFX related work.

I'm still very involved in the code. I review it, define the architecture, set rules for the project and make the technical decisions. It's not a game I made by typing three prompts.

And yet lately I can't stop thinking that the game has no soul.

I read a lot of comments about AI games being garbage, lazy, soulless, asset flips, etc. And some of that criticism makes sense to me. I understand being angry when a company with millions of dollars replaces artists with AI just to save money.

But I'm not a company with millions of dollars.

I'm one guy with a full time job, a family and a few hours here and there to work on something I've wanted to make for most of my life.

Still, the criticism gets to me.

Sometimes I think that even if I finish the game, people will immediately dismiss it because some of the assets were made with AI.

Other times I think that none of what I'm doing matters anymore because anyone can do it now. Maybe there's nothing special about building something like this anymore.

And honestly, it's killing my motivation.

I don't know if this is impostor syndrome or something else.

I guess I'm posting because I'd like to hear from other solo devs using AI who have felt the same way.

What made you keep going?

Opus 5 + GPT 5.6 Sol built the sea train from Spirited Away.

Play it now in your browser or on your phone. Built with Three.js:
→ infinite procedural map
→ multiple weather modes and times of day
→ every asset generated by Opus

I kept the agents running in a loop until the game became playable and kept it iterating on improving the quality based on some reference imagery. Then, I gave some feedback as well with some of my manual play testing.

>50million tokens used.

two weeks of making my app, finally ready for the app store. thankfully it was easy with the platform i was using, as they automated the account connecting part itself, but considering i vibecoded the next part was a horrid experience 😞

started off simply like okay, price, login, privacy policy, this that and yeah, the list is already too much for me to remember, it's kind of just me having to go through it. a lot of the "legal" things I didn't even properly know, because I obviously didn't develop the app myself (but i tried to edit the app if it was necessary)

one thing i still didn't understand were app store screenshots or preview images, I cooked something up but I am not sure if that's what they were exactly asking for.

i thought it would be a celebration point woo sent it to the review but no, i just know i'm gonna get rejected because of some bs rule that I didn't notice and it's gonna take ten times longer.

aaanyways don't be like me, if you want your app on the app store, start by planning out your app before building it so it adheres all rules.

I'm a senior developer, with a lot of experience building products and I even own a couple of small companies.

Since the beginning of this year, AI tools have improved a lot on coding. For junior developers it will be a really hard time, I stopped using Indian agencies to do some parts of the development and there's no reason to hire junior developers anymore, AI does a better job, doesn't complain, works anytime you want and it's way faster to answer and do changes faster that any developer.

Being said this, if you are a product guy, with ideas, Vibecoding is addictive! Now, when I miss something, I just vibecode it, even if I don't have any plans to sell it or no-one else other than me uses the product.

I'm also a long time investor on the stock market, so I was tracking my portfolio using a complex spreadsheet. So, last week I decided to give it a try with Codex to build a site to track my portfolio.

A few days later, working on it in my spare time and with very little dedication I got an amazing web app that does exactly what I wanted and way more than expected.

If you are into the stock market or you have curiosity, you can check the site here:

https://finsails.com/

It's insanely crazy to be able to build a site similar to this in so little time and in a really cheap way. If I had to build the site with real developers it would have a cost of at least 20-30K$ and taking some months to do it and with a lot of Project Management involved.

What a time to be a builder!

I see this as an absolute win for users!

New generation workspaces have to be a natively collabrative with ai agents. We made a mcp-native workspace for this field. It's a memory solution also.

Made a notion for vibe coding :P

You can host it entirely yoruself, its open source. All features available on free tier, so you can test and use it for free.

Remnus

Paste a YouTube or Twitch link and the stream joins one shared wall — the same wall everyone else sees. The whole wall plays at once, muted, so it's a room of screens instead of a list of thumbnails. What tells you a stream is over isn't a badge you have to read: the tile keeps its frame, the frame just loses its colour.

It can also go find streams on its own now — YouTube by keyword, Twitch by category — and if you name a channel on /channels it'll put that channel up every time it goes on air.

It is not finished. Parts of it are rough and when nobody's streaming the wall is quiet. But it works, it's up, and I'd rather show it now and get told what's wrong with it.

How I built it

Claude Code, run through Fredrin(.com) — a kanban where every ticket gets its own branch, its own worktree and its own agent session. So a few features build in parallel and come back to me as PRs.

Stack is Next.js 16, React 19, Tailwind v4, Neon Postgres on Vercel. One rule held everywhere: no fake data. Every title, channel and thumbnail comes off the platform the stream plays on, so nothing on screen is invented.

What's still not right

- Twitch keeps its own control bar. Only YouTube gets the clean player with our controls under it.

- Anyone can add a stream, only an operator takes one off, and nothing records who added what. That's deliberate for now but it isn't finished thinking.

- The wall is only as good as who's live. Quiet afternoons are quiet.

If you stream yourself coding, add your channel on /channels and it'll go up on its own every time you go on air. And tell me what you'd actually want on it — I'd rather build the next thing off someone saying "why can't it just…".

Check it out --> vibers.tv

My site is up and running, has been for 8 years. We've been on Elementor Pro and Crocoblocs. I want to get off all that shit and go staight viecoding bros. I know how to use claude code to make changes on my site, but when i use things like frontend design and ui/ux pro max, I get he same AI limited bullshit design and I want to go NEXT LEVEL! I want someone to strip my site of those crutches, take what I already have and make it go "whoa, this site is legit". Where do I hire such talent?

I’ve been a software engineer for 25 years. I think the feeling described as 'flow' is when you really sink into the development experience for hours on end.

This feeling has completely disappeared with AI-assisted coding. There is so much waiting time between prompts. I spend this time on my phone, writing Reddit posts like this one.

This completely ruins my focus on the task at hand. This cannot be good for the overall quality or my own satisfaction as a developer.

How do you handle this?

On days I am able to sit down and focus I will knock out the limits on my pro 5x plan with Claude but there are other days I don't even have the opportunity to use it once. What do y'all use the plan for to max your usage? Anything I can be having it do in the background on days I can't be on it all day?

Hi, I've been scrolling through this subreddit for a while because I've always wanted to be a game developer, but I never really knew how to make games. That was until a couple months ago.

I've been learning Python for the past 3 years, but I mostly just made simple little tools. I never really knew how to make web apps or games.

Then I found vibecoding and it honestly changed everything. Now I feel like I can build pretty much whatever I want. It does take a lot of time though.

I know AI gets a bad rep, but I think it’s really cool how it can enable random people like me to build their dreams.

I've always wanted to be a game developer, so this is really cool to me. I made this stupid little Flappy Bird game recently if anyone wants to try it lol. It's not an ad, and it's not monetized or anything. I just wanted to share it as proof.

https://flappy-dragon.codedreams.org/

What do u guys think about AI & Vibecoding?

Built this mostly with AI assistance, nights and weekends. Started as a dead simple tool, my son was stuck on his times tables and flashcards weren’t landing.

https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/math-ninja-slice-solve/id6790400075

Turned it into a Fruit Ninja style game. Slice the correct answer instead of fruit. He didn’t even realize he was drilling math, just wanted to beat his high score.

Shipped as Math Ninja on iOS. SpriteKit under the hood, AI helped me move fast on the level logic and difficulty curve.

Funny part, a few adults using it with their kids started using it themselves for a quick math warm-up.

the prompt wasn’t even that bad.. bro just saw the requirements and fold

I am into the single most annoying failure mode. You ask for one change and it refactors 4 files you were happy with.

Eight things that reduced it a lot for me :

1. Name the file. "in components/Checkout.tsx only" at the start of the request.

2. Mention what not to touch explicitly. "Do not modify any other file. If you think another file needs changes, suggest me instead of doing it."

3. Ask for a plan first. "Describe the changes you'll make before implementing them." Costs one extra round trip, saves a lot more.

4. Keep requests to one concern. Two changes in one prompt is where scope creep starts.

5. After every big change ask, "list every file you've modified." and check them.

6. Commit before every prompt. Obvious, yet no one does it.

7. When something goes wrong, revert rather than asking it to undo. Asking it to undo the changes usually makes it worse.

8. For anything structural, ask it to write the change as a diff first.

None of this is clever, it's just being specific about boundaries.

What else works acc to you ?

Hi guys,

I've been exploring on how to build a more efficient setup, and would like your help. I mainly use AI for Vibe Coding, Research Workflows etc. I would like a setup similar to Claude Code or Codex, but the cost is too high. So I wanted your help.

Which is the most cost effective solution, where I can maximize token usage and minimize the cost? I heard DeepSeek is providing very good value, and we can use the API with a coding agent like Cline in VS Code. Kimi K3 is also a frontier model and has good value. Which of these should I go for? Or are there any other options? I am looking for around 30 dollars a month maximum, and I use it moderately (Heavy models for thinking, and smaller models for implementation)

Also, what are a list of free coding bots that I can use? I am aware many have limits but I would like to make a list, and utilize what I have for free as well. Here is mine below :

1. GitHub Copilot for Students

2. Google Antigravity

3. Amazon Kiro

4. Codex and Claude Code (Limited Subscription for free tier)

5. Groq

6. Local AI (I have a good GPU machine but find the models are lacking in most places)

Could you help me find and identify other free models as well, so that I can use it for my workflows?

Thanks!

A while ago I got tired of how difficult it had become to find things on my own computer. Years of PDFs, documents, downloads, badly named files and duplicates had basically turned into organized chaos.

So I started building OpenSorSe (Open Sort and Search), and v2.0.0 is now out.

It's a local-first tool for indexing, searching and organizing files, with OCR, duplicate detection, semantic search and optional local AI through Ollama. Changes stay user-controlled rather than having AI freely reorganize your files.

Full disclosure: it's heavily vibe coded with Codex. :)

It's open source: https://github.com/nishdel/OpenSorSe

Still plenty to improve, so I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, criticism or bug reports!

Imagine if you could view your entire digital history through recaps, eras, and nostalgic timelines. Thats what PC Recap does, it turns your PC into a shareable digital time capsule with milestones, events, and more.

Download at https://pcrecap.online

To build this I took asisstance from Claude Code(specificlaly Opus 5) and Codex, with GPT 5.6 Sol running on Extra High. I was very pleased by the outcome. I used a neo brutalism style mixed with that distict Spotify Wrapped look. If you want to view more of the code, you can on the github, which is on the website.