I recently heard the comparison that AI is the smartphone of our generation.
Smartphones made taking photos easier for people to do casually. Do you still need experts to professionally shoot events, use the right equipment, and know the best lighting and angles? Yes. But the average person can take photos of their kids or pets for fun memories anytime.
AI “vibe” coding has opened up casually playing around with code and making small custom apps in the same way. Some people use it to learn, some use it for fun. Some people just want to see what it can do.
I play a game called FFXIV with a group of 48 people each week, working through a dungeon called Forked Tower: Blood. We have inside jokes, common things that happen in-game, and do special themed glams for the holidays.
Recently, we planned a meme night. The group was chatting about common memes and taking a drink each time X happened. I wanted to make sure people had fun rather than getting sick, so I quickly suggested bingo instead. It would also allow those not drinking to still have fun tracking the memes. I tossed in a couple of emotes as a prize for the first 5 to get bingo.
However, we only had about 3 hours until the run was going to start.
Google’s AI Studio helped me get set up quickly and easily. I needed specific features: the ability to import and export custom board items, a way to get a PNG of their board for winner verification, and fast randomization. I also needed a simple way to share it quickly without dealing with the fees or limitations of online bingo board generators. After I guided AI Studio to the point where I was ready to get the group's input(because the initial meme ideas were so cringe and I could only make about 20 off the top of my head), I hit publish. Google’s integration there meant I had a working URL to share within a minute.
We had a ton of fun. Lots of laughter was had tracking the night's shenanigans, and it cost 80 cents to host it (well, zero with my free-tier credits). I was asked to do it again the week after, but make it more egg hunt focused (the next run was the weekend of Easter). In the game, there is a limited-time event called HatchingTide, so I made a new theme for the board where they had a chance to randomly find eggs as they tracked their bingo. I also made a more vaporwave version of the board that had no mention of drinking for those who don’t want that on their board, but still wanted to participate. I fleshed out a safety version for “prog” runs where the focus was leaning and actually progressing through the fight. Now that I had a week to plan instead of 3 hours, I could play around with it more and add more options for the randomization.
AI isn’t perfect. I had to redirect it a few times. I wanted to revert to a previous version, but it remembered the prompts after the revert and brought back the changes I had tried to erase. It needed lots of manual checking, and I exported my options frequently in order to make sure that if it hallucinated that they needed to change, I could just copy and paste instead of fully reverting. There were UI changes that just did not make sense, and the options it chose initially made no sense to someone who actually plays the game. But it gave a great base for me to adjust to make something quickly for our group.
Because it needs that review, because what it creates is not always going to work or is going to have a ton of unnecessary code, our expert photographers will always be needed. This board will never be prod-ready.
I know there is a lot of anti-AI sentiment out there. I added a footer on the site says flame me if you want, and I want to acknowledge that we need to figure out how to support the artists and creators whose content trains the models. I want the art of my in-game character for my profile picture to be created by an actual artist. I want people who understand the game to help design collabs that actually mean something. We don’t need to shove AI at every problem. But focused use to help people quickly create what they otherwise wouldn’t have had the ability to do is amazing. I’m keeping an open mind as we see where AI takes us.
Top comments (17)
This is one of the best real-world examples of where AI actually shines. 💪
Not replacing engineers, but enabling “previously unjustifiable” use cases — small, social, context-specific tools.
The key takeaway for me:
AI lowers the cost of experimentation, not necessarily the cost of robustness.
This is a great story! Thanks for sharing on DEV 🙌
Great perspective AI really does feel like a “smartphone moment” for coding. It lowers the barrier so anyone can create something fun quickly, but still needs human judgment to refine it. Loved the bingo example practical, creative, and community-focused
The versioning problem you hit — where reverting didn't actually erase the AI's memory of previous prompts — is one of the most under-discussed friction points in vibe coding. I've found that treating each major feature as a separate conversation/session works better than trying to iterate in one long thread, since the context window accumulates conflicting instructions.
Your 3-hour timeline is actually a great benchmark. In my automation consulting work, I've noticed the sweet spot for vibe-coded tools is exactly this: single-purpose, known audience, used a handful of times. The moment you need persistence or multi-user state, the complexity jumps 10x and that's where you want real engineering. The "disposable app" framing is the key insight here.
I was so surprised! I didn't word a prompt right and it tried to make the "Safety" Run more construction focused, did an immediate revert, then later it came back to the alternative naming that made no sense. First time prompting where I found it keep something I tried to remove, it was so unexpected.
Great real-world example of “vibe coding” actually delivering value, the bingo app perfectly shows how AI lowers the barrier for fun, niche tools. I like the balanced take too, especially acknowledging the need for human judgment and creativity alongside AI
I really liked this perspective. Using AI for small, joyful, hyper-specific apps feels like one of the most practical use cases right now. The FFXIV bingo example made the idea feel real, not just hype.
the smartphone analogy is actually pretty solid. the real unlock is treating these throwaway apps as disposable build it use it once forget it. no git repo needed
i'm all in on the vibe coding wave—it's how i build most of my small projects lately. the real hack is keeping the scope tiny so you don't fight the context window too much. if the code starts bloating i just spin up a new component and keep the flow going. austin taught me: just start the thing.
Hello,
I would like to kindly ask for your professional opinion regarding the game Old School RuneScape (OSRS).
Do you consider it a good game worth trying?
I truly appreciate your honest feedback and any valuable advice you can share.
Thank you in advance.
Going to be honest, I've heard of Runescape but never played it myself. Aion and Everquest are 2 other MMORPG's I've enjoyed, but FFXIV is my longstanding go to :)
Thank you for your kindness in replying. Wishing you more moments of happiness and success!"😊
The smartphone analogy is perfect. I think the real unlock of vibe coding is not just making development accessible â it is making prototyping essentially free.
When the cost of building a throwaway prototype drops to near zero, people start solving problems they would never have bothered with before. Your FFXIV bingo generator is a great example. Pre-AI, nobody would have spent 4 hours building a one-off bingo card generator for a meme night. Now it takes 15 minutes and the result is genuinely delightful.
One thing I wonder about though: as these vibe-coded apps get shared more widely (guild Discord bots, shared Google Sheets, etc.), do they start accumulating technical debt in ways that matter? Like, if 50 guild members depend on a Claude-generated bingo bot that breaks when the prompt changes, who fixes it?
This is where I think the next evolution of vibe coding needs to go â not just generating the app, but making it maintainable enough that the next person can tweak it without needing to re-prompt from scratch.
AI Studio actually lets you share the project/prompt history, so if you have someone you trust you can transfer or give them edit access. Now for online communities, making sure you don't accidentally share with someone who will wipe it is what I would be worried about(I've seen people wipe shared trackers because they wanted to be the only one to know when special mobs were due to respawn, rude but hard to control). Would depend alot on use case, AI Studio is not a one size fits all for vibe coding, but for smaller things like this I think it shines.