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Comment by kentonv

6 days ago

(I'm the author of this library -- or, the guy who prompted the AI at least.)

I absolutely would not vibe code an OAuth implementation! Or any other production code at Cloudflare. We've been using more AI internally, but made this rule very clear: the human engineer directing the AI must fully understand and take responsibility for any code which the AI has written.

I do think vibe coding can be really useful in low-stakes environments, though. I vibe-coded an Android app to use as a baby monitor (it just streams audio from a Unifi camera in the kid's room). I had no previous Android experience, and it would have taken me weeks to learn without AI, but it only took a few hours with AI.

I think we are in desperate need of safe vibe coding environments where code runs in a sandbox with security policies that make it impossible to screw up. That would enable a whole lot of people to vibe-code personal apps for personal use cases. It happens I have some background building such platforms...

But those guardrails only really make sense at the application level. At the systems level, I don't think this is possible. AI is not smart enough yet to build systems without serious bugs and security issues. So human experts are still going to be necessary for a while there.

What tools did you use for the vibe coding an Android app? And was it able to do the UI stuff too?

I've wanted to do this but am not sure how to get started. For example, should I generate a new app in Android Studio and then point Claude Code at it? Or can I ask Claude Code (or another agent) to start it from scratch? (in the past that did not work, but I'm curious if it's just a PEBKAC error)

  • I used Claude Code. I actually just asked it what tools I needed for a CLI-driven build, and it told me what to install (or even installed it for me in some cases). I basically didn't read any documentation, just asked Claude what I should do.

    • Amazing, thank you!

      Edit: Holy shit, in 30 minutes I used Claude code to make a simple PDF viewer app, and it totally works. I did have to prompt it through the process quite a bit, including correcting some obvious flubs, but I'm super impressed.

      I didn't even have to install the android dev tools because I asked it to generate a Dockerfile in which to do the build, and a simple script to copy the apk out when done :-D

> I do think vibe coding can be really useful in low-stakes environments, though. I vibe-coded an Android app to use as a baby monitor (it just streams audio from a Unifi camera in the kid's room). I had no previous Android experience, and it would have taken me weeks to learn without AI, but it only took a few hours with AI.

Bro, you're still an engineer at Cloudflare!

One problem I see with "vibe coding" is how it means one thing if Ilya Sutskever says it, and another if a non-tech executive parrots it and imagines "citizens developers" coding their own business apps.