Comment by gyomu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gyomu | Hacker News Reader

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Posts like this reminds me of the classic "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People" [0].

The author loves vibe coding because... it lets them vibe code even more:

"One of my early intense projects was VibeTunnel. A terminal-multiplexer so you can code on-the-go. I poured pretty much all my time into this earlier this year, and after 2 months it was so good that I caught myself coding from my phone while out with friends… and decided that this is something I should stop, more for mental health than anything."

It's unclear whether the "all my time" here is "all my waking hours" or "all my time outside of my job, family duties, and other hobbies", but it's still a bit puzzling.

And so anyway, what is it that they want to code on the go so much?

"an AI assistant that has full access to everything on all my computers, messages, emails, home automation, cameras, lights, music, heck it can even control the temperature of my bed."

I guess everyone's free to get their kicks however they feel like, but - paying thousands of dollars in API fees to control your music and the temperature of your bed? Why is that so exciting?

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

I’ve already saved more in monthly app subscriptions by vibe-coding them into existence than my ChatGPT subscription costs.

This guy is clearly an outlier and spending far more than most, but from personal experience you can extract an enormous amount of value from a $20/month ChatGPT subscription, especially when paired with Codex.

What apps have you replaced? I'd like to do the same if possible

Duolingo:

I am learning Greek at the moment, with codex I was able to produce a microsite and a prompt that can generate a lesson per day. It's pretty cool as it does both TTS and speach to text so I can actually practice generated conversations with myself.

Calorie Tracking:

Now I just send a picture or text into a Telgram channel, agent pics it up classifies it as "food info" sends to another agent for calculating calories either a best effort guess or if I've sent nutritional information in the pic reads it and follows up asking for portion size.

Workout Tracking:

Same telegraph channel, again just free text of what I've lifted/exercises I've done and it all gets stored. There's then an agent that uses this and the calories submitted to see if I am on track to reach my goals or offers tweaks as I go.

Reminders:

Same telegraph channel ( there's a theme here ) send reminders in, it's stored and a scheduler runs that sends me a push notification when the even is due. It's simple but just way better than googles offering

Then there's some other personal assistant stuff, for example I get a lot of emails from my kids school that contains important dates/requests for money, before this was a PITA to extract, now I just have an agent that reads the emails/extracts the documents and scans them for relevant information and adds to my calendar, or sends me payment reminder requests until I've paid them.

I'm pretty early days but I can just see this list expanding.

Thanks!

For Duolingo you still need to pay for the tokens the app consumes when it generates your daily lesson, yes? I'm sure it's still less than paying Duolingo just wanted to confirm.

Calorie tracking is nice also! Combined with workout tracking it's pretty good! I get workout tracking free with Garmin + Strava.

I like the email additions too! I think Gmail does something similar but this feels like on steroids. Wow all this feels like I'm in school again learning coding for the first time :)

It's crazy cheap for personal use I put $10 on about 2/3 months ago and I have $7 left...

The daily lesson are vibe coded as part of the codex chatgpt $20 a month subscription costs

Sounds like you're using LLMs to replace human connection.

For example instead of: Duolingo - I practice with my friends Calorie tracking - I have planned meals from my dietitian Workout tracking - I have WhatsApp with my PT, who adjusts my next workouts from our conversations Reminders - A combo of Siri + Fantastical + My Wife

I'm sure my way is more expensive but I don't know, there is also a non tangible cost of not having friends/personal connections as well.

I may be missing your intent, but this feels like a misread of what I was describing.

I wasn’t swapping human connection for LLMs. These workflows already existed; I’ve simply used newer tools to make them better aligned to my needs and more cost-effective for me.

I imagine a vibe coded Django app on a VPS which is a webhook endpoint from Telegram. Is your setup similar?

Just uses the Telegram provided long polling API, nothing fancy at all.

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