Indie Founders, Building First SaaS Products

“I have basically 0 coding knowledge. Like, I’m not a developer pretending to be a beginner — I genuinely don’t know how to code. I wanted to make a Pokémon Champions team-building/analysis app, so I started doing everything through ChatGPT. The process was basically: I’d have an idea → ask if it made sense → ask how similar apps or competitive players handle it → compare a few possible approaches → pick one → tell ChatGPT to implement it. Then I’d actually use the app and start complaining about”

“I don't know anything about cybersecurity, but I've been vibe coding a saas for the last little bit. Would this be helpful for something like that?”

“How is it handling imperfect specs? Asking as I tried auto-generators a few times on real-world, clearly imperfect but working specs, and every single one I tried was absolute gobshite there. I don’t recall all names as it was a while ago, but openapi-generator was on the list.”

“I'm genuinely curios what do you guys do with these "great apps" the finance guy built on his lunch break and want to have his whole team to get access to ? I have a finance director who built something and he wants to share it with others and I don't know what to do! submitted by /u/GlumMeet9567 [link] [comments]”

For personal projects, many. For work, almost none.

“I don't think I have written a line of code since early 2025. EDIT: More interested in answers from people that are working. submitted by /u/MathematicianIcy2760 [link] [comments]”

“Don't worry about random people calling it "vibecoded". If you have actually put in months of effort to design, build, test, validate then I guess it will be better than most of the slop. There is a difference between vibecoding over a weekend, expecting to get rich quick - and genuinely crafting a software product over a long term. Take feedback from limited users and keep improving/iterating the product. That makes the difference.”

“I’ve built an app which I believe presents a genuinely new type of online communication. It solves a problem I’ve had myself, and I believe it could actually be a solution for others as well. But yes, it’s vibecoded. I’ve spent a couple of months getting it to where it is today. I work as a software engineer, and sure, anyone could build something similar. But not in a weekend. So what does it take before I can show it to the world without just being called out as some simple weekend project? Or”

“Appreciate the detail here, saving this. The interactive prototype step is something I hadn't really considered doing before writing code, always assumed you go straight from wireframe to MVP. Curious how you present that prototype to people though, is it more like scheduled calls where you walk them through it live, or do you just send a link and let them click through on their own? Seems like the format might affect how honest the feedback actually is”

“Ive recently been learning to use workbuddy and notion to build automation scripts to improve my workflow, but Im also really interested in vibecoding. Have looked through some projects in this sub, and honestly, a lot of them feel pretty similar. There are so many note taking apps, fitness apps, etc. And guess what I came up with when I tried to think of my own idea? Yep... a fitness app. XD I feel like creativity is probably the most important part of vibecoding, and also the hardest part. But”

“Why is everyone chasing coding? There's a gap for cheap but intelligent model that can have agentic software applications built on top for general purpose. Gemini flash was fantastic for that until they got greedy and tripled their price (unless they make the current discount permanent). Luna is a great price but it's kinda dumb and if you're trying to build something you need investment from a Sam Altman approved VC or 6 figures for the enterprise plan upfront if you want rate limit”

“Thank you for the valuable guidance – I fully understood the point. The aspects you mentioned will be the foundation of my project, and I'm grateful for your advice. However, I have a simple question: how do I determine the appropriate price for this project when presenting it to clients?”

“true, you can start with subway surfers. ive seen a lot of vibecoders use it for 'benchmarking' models”

“Alright, with a better understanding of the scope and scale of the product I think I can speak a bit better to the questions in the OP. I don't have a full understanding I'm sure, but I'm pretty sure I now understand the general product and at least the high-level basics of how it would be constructed. With that in mind: I would like to get the perspective of seasoned developers and domain experts on this problem, whether this is something niche or actually a real problem. This is de”

“Plenty of browser based tools: https://codeshack.io/tools/ I've been using this site since early 2020s (before AI)”

“I made a mistake with the last launch with a stupid dead link on a landing-page I vibe coded. I'm not against "agents" but seldom use them, I opened an exception for the UI since I had neglected an onboarding flow thinking people would go blog -> app. Lo and behold the agent which worked quite well puts in a deadlink... Anyway, lesson learned.The app uses machine vision to infer exercise kinematics and from there a whole lot more (fatigue inference, training suggestions, ideal load calculations)”

“Version 1 (live now): A system design + coding interview practice platform. Solve problems two ways, write code against real test cases, or design a system (architecture diagram + API contract + database schema) and get it auto-graded by 32 deterministic rule-checks, not a vague AI opinion. Windows 95-themed UI throughout, user profiles with follow/streak tracking, a Discuss forum, threaded comments with voting, and an admin review pipeline for community-submitted problems. Coming very soon: Mor”

“the log message point is spot on, but there's a second half to it people skip: good logs help you debug something once you already suspect it's broken. they don't tell you it's broken in the first place. that's the actual gap on most side projects, nobody's watching until a user emails you about it. a free uptime check plus one alert on 5xx rate covers a surprising amount of that for near-zero setup cost. it's the difference between finding out from an alert and findi”

submitted by /u/Few-Moment-4794 [link] [comments]

“Hi, I'm Kaushik Majhi. I don't have a laptop or a computer. I just have a phone and some big dreams. But I kept all the excuses aside and started making it from the phone itself, and now my progress is almost 80% complete, Only some paywall and backend work is left, I hope I can deploy it in 3 days. submitted by /u/kidkoushik [link] [comments]”

“Vibe-coded projects usually fail in two places. The code is coupled, so one change breaks three things you did not touch. And the UI has no states, so it looks fine until something is empty, slow, or wrong. Two old methodologies fix most of both. Axiomatic design (Nam Suh, 1990) for the first. Don Norman's design criteria for the second. Neither one is new and neither one is about AI. That is the point. Here is the prompt. Paste it before your actual request. ``` Before you write any code, d”

“That makes more sense. I think the real product is the mental model, not the abstraction itself. If users can see what depends on what and what a change might break, they can make decisions instead of just trusting the tool. That would separate it from most no-code products.”

“Background first. I did product management for three years at a consumer internet company, then quit and have been living out of a backpack around East and Southeast Asia since. I can read code, slowly, on a good day. I cannot write it. Two travel disasters set this up. I landed in Bangkok the week Thailand made its digital arrival card mandatory and learned it existed while standing in the immigration queue, filling in the form on airport wifi with one bar of signal. And a few months before tha”

“You fix this by not vibe coding. Requirements, branch strategies, architecture, structure, unit and regression tests, robust observability etc. All things that contribute to maintainable software. That’s not to say AI isn’t a great accelerator when used properly. And while opening your ide and just chatting something into existence works in the short term, it’s not sustainable and leads to situations like the one you’re asking about.”

submitted by /u/mandanda6 [link] [comments]

“Good example for that I meant. Developers talked with the customers and developed the tool they needed. Do you really think a non technical would be able to come up with it using a bit of vibe coding?”

“Re: vibe-coding. This is not a solution, this is scorched-earth revenge. If you vibe-code something behind the engineering team's back, then you're the toxic ingredient in this mix and you'll lose the trust and respect necessary to work collaboratively as a unit.”

“Hola, Llevo en el mundo de la programación mucho tiempo. En febrero, un poco asustado por el tema de la IA hice una prueba de concepto. Hice una app a base de prueba y error con la IA y corrigiendo sus scripts. Al principio estimé que necesitaría 3-4 personas full time en aproximadamente 6 meses siendo optimista y un poco menos de un año siendo realista sin usar la IA. Me llevó poco más de tres meses hacerla 100% yo solo y en mi tiempo libre. Al principio era VibeCoding, pero claro, la IA interp”

“I’m building a multi-tenant SaaS (native iOS app + Postgres backend). Most of the code is written by Claude code and reviewed by codex and before I have any users, I want to test the backend foundations. I don’t have the ability to pay for an engineer to test this as yet, so I’m looking for ideas on a reliable way to thoroughly test what I’ve built. Thanks submitted by /u/andy_subbi [link] [comments]”

“The idea is to build an abstraction over code so that code is not dealt with at all. No-code tools have been doing this but not in the right way... there is a better way to do this, which does not limit one in terms of customisability or scalability yet making them understand the mental model behind thier app. This gives them the ability to make changes and build logic by themselves without having to rely on anyone else.”

[ Removed by Reddit ]

:(

“i am working on a toolkit that initially was designed to organize my teaching materials. i have recently had the idea to use it to manage the development of the tool itself. i have been working on it for about a year, usually several hours a day. the specific things for llm's are that it embeds a few command line harnesses i am currently using myself (pi, claude, codex) and i am trying to setup a few others as well. they can be added as embedded consoles that can read and modify the board. t”

“This is top of mind for me since I'm relatively new to vibing and I'm about to release my app to open beta (writing software for novelists/authors who want to use AI responsibly, e.g., as a thought partner not a ghostwriter). This is my first foray into production and I'm nervous! Then I read this article about how Dolly Parton responded when Barbara Walters essentially called her a hillbilly. Has anyone on this sub ever been called out or talked down to as "just a vibe coder&qu”

“Very counterculture opinion for this thread! I was recently having this discussion with the developer I'm working with for my our app. I got the AI slop version to the point I could before reaching out to him for help. I didn't want to just give him a blank page and say "can you build it all for me?". He's a friend, so he's not being mean about anything. Just mentioned the AI tell signs are there. But those may be more obvious to people in this world, and we may be plac”

“I’d start with people who already have a spreadsheet or manual process that’s become a pain. Not someone who just wants to build an app for the first time. The hard part usually isn’t describing the first version. It’s making the thing fit their actual workflow, then being able to change it without breaking everything six weeks later. That’s the problem I’d validate.”

“What if the logic is made apparent and understandable to these people? Do you think that would help when they work with what they can understand and modify safely, without breaking anything else?”

You're ignoring the domain expertise of being an engineer.

“Vibe coding fails because domain experts lack the mental model to validate output. You cannot maintain software by guessing at abstractions without understanding the underlying execution logic”

“There is a big chunk of people who understand their domain better than a developer would, but simply fail when it comes to solving their problems using software. Now, of course, they can whip up an app (MVP or Prototype) in 5 minutes using Lovable, but they would eventually get stuck when it comes to debugging or working with complex logic. When you do not understand code, you essentially rely on AI to do that for you. Since NLP is ambiguous and given the nature of AI, this can never be done as”

“This kinda motivated me to just keep looking for what's coming and don't have too many thoughts on optimizing. Thank you a lot. :) Funny that the CEO said that”

“So the code was written heavily using AI but post understanding by one person in the team entirely. Only he wrote, tested and understood the business logic behind it. I had recently cleaned up the codebase from bottlenecks, and I got infuriated when I observed a few getting re-introduced. To my surprise, I got to know that it has been already merged in release branch, scheduled for this weekend's release. It was approved by one person who themselves didn't go through the code at all (onl”

“I see the term "looks like AI vibe coded slop" thrown around often. What specifically makes a site look AI-made or sloppy? I am a professional full stack software engineer. I use agents in both my work and side projects now, but enjoyed coding by hand before LLMs. The UI/UX of the AI generated frontends are definitely more visually appealing than ones I've done by hand. I'm not a frontend programmer or a designer, I prefer function over form. Is it some common visual elements,”

““Vibe code” can mean anything from a weekend project that barely works to a surprisingly polished app now lol. Would be nice to know what they’re judging on, especially if they’re expecting people to build something onchain.”

feeding it your old codebase as context is actually a really cool approach

“so much hate towards vibe coded apps... the thing that produces the code is irrelevant. does your product solve a problem people are willing to pay for ? that's the question”

“Ive recently been learning to use workbuddy and notion to build automation scripts to improve my workflow, but Im also really interested in vibecoding. Have looked through some projects in this sub, and honestly, a lot of them feel pretty similar. There are so many note taking apps, fitness apps, etc. And guess what I came up with when I tried to think of my own idea? Yep... a fitness app. XD I feel like creativity is probably the most important part of vibecoding, and also the hardest part. But”

“I recently create a mobile app to control your laptop or system agent from anywhere in the world.”

“Yeah that is unrealistic. That would require you to basically have the entire project documented out waterfall style and then implemented by LLM. No big feature changes, no rewrites, no huge migrations or behavior changes after shipping. If you have an "all green" test suite and you ship a bunch of major changes the AI is going to fall apart. And if you are writing SaaS you are going to be changing your product 10X before it even gets in front of people. then another 30X after that.”

“I'm paying good money for this guy, he says he's an experienced dev but idk, am I getting scammed? submitted by /u/ParkityParkPark [link] [comments]”

“I think you're spot on and we stopped trying to forcefit ourselves into how other companies work (full disclosure, I own a Document and Signature automation company). I think software, and specifically for companies under 500 people, is a race to 0 when an internal IT guy (or even a tech-saavy lawyer) can rebuild a lot of the flows in a few weekends. I think the divide is going to be enterprise/mid-market and then anyone else smaller than that is going to have a hard time justifying the cost”

“While I appreciate the point you're trying to make, I suspect a lot of people who do coding by themselves hate writing clear, succinent text. Arguably, many of them also suck at it. Not everyone needs to be great at everything. At least AI makes these posts parsable as a reader.”

“The sample of one part is important. Knowing the industry gives you a huge head start, but it can also make your own habits feel more universal than they really are. I’d still validate the feature with other users before spending too much time polishing it.”

“why you think so , it was a genuine question , i wanted to know so i can start building something?”

“Deal. Grabbing Ordo now, I'll do a real messy brain dump and report back exactly where I got stuck, no sugarcoating. Appreciate you offering to run the three tasks blind on CaltrackIQ too - that's exactly the kind of feedback I can't get from anyone who already knows the app.”

“This is a good question. So the initial idea was to use an existing GH account rather than creating an account on someone else's server. Also the mind maps are stored in a user's private repo, so it will be safer. In local mode the user can still host MindSpark with SQLite without an account; it's single-user. You can also try: PAT-only (GitHub Pages, no worker) version.”

“yeah the constant noise during the week just melts away when you get to fiddle with your own messy code on a saturday, nobody breathing down your neck about deadlines or "brand synergy" i get so lost in it sometimes i forget to eat lunch, last weekend i was doing this little script to sort my recipe bookmarks and suddenly it was 4pm”

“I'm looking for something real to build. I'm a data analyst and I enjoy building things with AI/vibe coding. Instead of coming up with another random AI app, I want to find a problem people actually deal with and build an MVP around it. What is something annoying or repetitive that you currently solve manually? It could be anything — work, business, personal productivity, research, boring admin tasks, etc. I'm particularly interested in problems where existing solutions are too expen”

“use the things you know and have knowledge of mostly. For example i have knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, CSS and some java. So i use PHP + JS + HTML + CSS for vibe coding i am blind only on PHP. And when i do get issue which claude don''t fix - go to good old fashion forum, friends, Family ( if someone is Software engineer ) and Hit and trial. When using claude code if your app is complex and interlined you must remember everything and correct the claude when it hallucinates otherwise it”