Vibe Coding Series: The Rate AI Assistant
I was a web developer for about ten years—back in the day. I loved building things, but I never really loved the coding part. I liked creating.
Now, thanks to AI, the game’s changed. With “vibe coding”—a term coined by AI researcher and OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy—I can build apps just by talking to AI. You still need to be aware of app dev essentials like security and performance, but the ability to go from idea to prototype just by describing what you want? Feels like magic.
Over the past few months, I’ve been vibe coding nonstop. It’s addictive.
I’m sharing what I’m building to document the process, starting with this small app I created to solve a real expat problem for myself.
I live in Japan but get paid in U.S. dollars, so I’m always checking exchange rates, wondering, “Should I buy yen today or wait?” I’m no currency expert—but AI can be. So I built an app that uses AI to forecast the USD/JPY exchange rate for the next few days, with live rate updates built in. It’s still a v0.1 beta, but it works. We’ll see how accurate the AI is over time.
I built this first version using Replit AI, but I’ve also been vibe coding with a few other tools—more on those soon. So far, Replit and Lovable are my favorites, but there are plenty out there, and choosing just one isn’t easy—nor should you at this point. There’s strength in using multiple tools, something I plan to write more about soon.
The Replit link above is my affiliate link—every user gets one. If you sign up, I’ll earn some credits to keep building. I only share tools I actually use and like.
This isn’t a full review, but I’ll say this: Replit has become one of my go-to platforms for vibe coding, and I recommend it to anyone curious about building with AI.
As always, your mileage may vary, so use what’s helpful. Discard the rest.
Follow along—this is just the start of the vibe coding series.
Written by a creative technologist, photographer, and an evolving human living in Japan—enhanced (and tangled) by technology.