Design by Vibe Coding

I’ve managed to make a modicum of progress on Kitpicks. I’ve been doing some UI work, trying to get something that feels like a good app before I implement the algorithms and data layers. It’s really about shaking out my assumptions and making sure there aren’t hidden requirements.

To do this, I’ve been passing off a lot of the code work to Copilot. I’ve found that it’s really pretty good at straightforward UI tasks (using common libraries and frameworks). I think I’ll stick to “edit” mode though – I found that “agent” mode would sometimes go off and start trying to make changes that I hadn’t even remotely requested. Maybe that’s the point? It is interesting that Copilot has this product which is so over-eager to prove how proactive it is that it goes around doing things it’s not supposed to do and potentially creates messes that will be difficult to clean up. Maybe they’re doing too good a job of replicating the experience of working with a junior engineer (or at least, the kind of junior engineer I was)…

I think Copilot has one other huge drawback. This is the first time I’ve used a new framework (Vue) for a project, without feeling like I’m actually learning that framework yet. Oh well. I’m sure once things start breaking I’ll have plenty of reason to learn the framework more thoroughly.

Anyway, this is a screenshot of the main feed view for Kitpicks as it stands:

There are a lot of little details I’m not thrilled with (buttons, shadows, colors, etc.) but at the wireframe level I think things are coming together. The next phase of really fleshing out more of the secondary screens and the details will potentially be tough for me – like Copilot, I’m champing at the bit to start building out the data layers. But this is an app I want to ship, so it’s worth it to make sure I’ve thought through the requirements and have a well-defined MVP.