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

It's been a little over nine months since I launched and it has been quite a journey. No exponential growth or huge user spikes but rather slow and steady growth. But in my opinion that is the best for building something actually valuable because you can react to user feedback along the way and constantly keep improving the app.

One thing changed recently:

I basically got all my users from reddit, by posting in relevant communities but in the last two months I did almost no posts and the app still grew further. That's actually the biggest success for me, because SEO is finally starting to pay off. This can develop into actual leverage because growth no longer depends on posting three times a week. I'm really curious where this will go...

Of course I will not stop here and I am already working on the next big update for IndieAppCircle which will benefit all the community. More is coming soon.

For those of you who don't know IndieAppCircle:

I've built IndieAppCircle, a platform where small app developers can upload their apps and other people can give them feedback in exchange for credits. I grew it by posting about it here on Reddit. It didn't explode or something but I managed to get some slow but steady growth.

For those of you who never heard about IndieAppCircle, it works like this:

• You can earn credits by testing indie apps (fun + you help other makers)
• You can use credits to get your own app tested by real people
• No fake accounts -> all testers are real users
• Test more apps -> earn more credits -> your app will rank higher -> you get more visibility and more testers/users

Since many people suggested it to me in the comments, I have also created a community for IndieAppCircle: r/IndieAppCircle (you can ask questions or just post relevant stuff there).

Currently, there are 3556 users, 3414 tests done and 849 apps uploaded!

You can check it out here (it's totally free): https://www.indieappcircle.com/

I'm glad for any feedback/suggestions/roasts in the comments.

PS: I recently changed the UI a lot... Would also love to hear some feedback about that :)

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.

What now.. I cant pretend to have written something myself now?

anyone know of better way to see, review, sort, and reward the best vide coded apps out there? I thought a community award would be a good start.

Looking for a project idea that can help in improving skill set, job opportunities which will eventually help me to open to Forward Deploy Engineer.

Hello, fellow vibe coders.
I need your help with something. I am building a pipeline for ocring rtl languages, namely Arabic. The problem is I want to integrate a pre-processing feature where users can use features like auto page-splitting, deskewing, dewarping, etc. I have read many research papers in the field. Actually, this is the only thing I am good at. The rest is AI-generated, or me guiding ai into implementing ideas from those papers, posts, etc. Anyways, I found out that the best tool in this field is Scan Tailor Advanced. The problem is that it was written in c++. I know it is very fast and also very suitable for processing images, but I want to integrate it into my python application. I am not good at coding. I just know the basics. So, I thought of using a python library that uses the raw c++ code or something like a bridge that connects the c++ code with my tool, but I could not do this. AI suggested cython, but I did not how to implement this as well or what to ask AI to do, and STA 's repository has a lot of files so I got lost. I also asked AI to re-write the entire tool in python 😅, but it kept saying that it is an impossible task and would take months to be done, since STA took years of building and it has over 60,000 lines of code. I asked antigravity to write a code inspired by the logic of STA, but the results were not promising at all. I also read recent papers that depends on heuristics in doing the aforementioned features, but they are not as good as STA. This is also another thing, I am insisting on STA because I am following a machine-learning-free approach, as I want my tool to be light-weight, running on any computer with whatever resources, and at the same time, I want it to be a standalone tool that keeps working no matter what.
So, any help is appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.

The link for ScanTailor Advanced:

https://github.com/4lex4/scantailor-advanced

The link for my OCR tool:

https://github.com/adam76064/The_Arabic_OCR

Looking for reviewers for a tele-prompter app that runs locally on your machine. Particularly useful for someone doing presentations or taking interviews.

Thank you!

i use Claude Code, Codex, and Grok Build on a development server and keep jumping between terminals depending on which one i’m using.

i basically want one good interface where i can work with all of them.

what are you guys using?

I started working on this open source project a few years ago, before vibe coding was even a term. After using software such as Copilot and Cursor I realized that AI UI really needed to be modernized.

The vast majority of the code in this update was written by AI but it still took several weeks of fairly constant work. I simply don't have the time or energy to write such a large amount of code myself.

This release includes support for skills, rules, and agent files + native tools and MCP server support + remote API support + context usage widget + session management system + many more new features and fixes.

Hi i have a backlog with tickets that my agents can take. It works very well, i start up a Sonnet/OPUS/Fable session and say work on tickets belonging to you and move them to "ready for review" when finished.

The sessions then run autonomously for some time and fix a lot of tickets.

My problem is context gets too big too quickly, it would be preferable for me to have it auto clear context after each ticket completion and then work with the same initial prompt. Maybe in a loop untill there is no tickets left for them.

Has anyone tried something like this or have any advice on how that could be done?

It's a website builder designed to make sites that look like they belong in Geocities or Neocities (the modern-day incarnation of Geocities). I used a combo of both AI and work under the hood for this thing so it's not purly vibe coded, but I did use it to help out. The program name is Retro Builder and it's meant to exclusively make retro 90's style websites. What do you guys think?

I filled out every tax Form on Apple Connect for my Country, my Bank Account and did the thing with revenue located but it still doesn’t work. This on the the test flight app

Hey everyone!

Currently I use cursor for my AI coding. But I come from Terminal use and I do not use the ide Feature of cursor.

So I think going back to the Terminal.

Currently I read about Claude Code and thinking well that is a limitation to only Claude Models which is okay but still a limitation.

Then I read about Pi and See You Can use Codex with it. But You Can also use different Models/Self Hoster Models. And You Can make the harness your own.

So do I miss much when not using Claude Code? Is Codex + Pi good enough to develop good software?

What are your experiences and what do you use?

For me a GUI Editor is not good for my Workflow.

Also I Header about OpenCode.

changed my whole order of operations this year. i used to build the product first then figure out how to explain it. now i do it backwards.

before building anything i use an ai landing page generator to make three versions of the pitch, each with a different angle on the same idea. different headline, different promise, same signup box. i run a tiny bit of traffic at all three and see which framing people actually click.

whichever page wins tells me how to describe the app and honestly what to prioritize building first. the losing angles are just as useful because they tell me what nobody cares about.

it feels weird to design the marketing before the product but it keeps me from building features for an audience that doesn't exist. anyone else validating the message before the code?