For those who can kind or speak, you’ll be able to most likely vibe code. It is actually that straightforward. You merely talk your thought to the AI chatbot of your alternative with pure language, and it’ll get to work. Whereas all tasks might not find yourself being a pearly gem and even solely purposeful, the trouble concerned to create an internet app by simply chatting is minimal.
I’ve performed round with vibe coding fairly a bit, creating random tasks right here and there. I’ve principally tried it out for proof of idea or simply chatbot testing functions, however not often in an try and make one thing essential or purposeful to the purpose the place I would see myself utilizing it each day. Then I started on the lookout for an e-reader system and walked away annoyed by how extremely “dumb” most of them are, particularly Kindles. Extra on that later.
Whatever the motivation (however principally in defiance of Amazon), it prompted me to attempt to vibe code a repair, however with a twist. I needed to see if I may vibe code a purposeful e-reading utility with all the options I needed. Understanding that even when I received this factor up and operating, I possible would not use this each day, however I needed so as to add some aptitude.
The query turned what AI chatbot to make use of. I did not hassle attempting to decide on. I used Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT to create what I needed after which see if one produced higher outcomes.
The immediate
Evaluating chatbots is difficult to do, particularly when attempting to imitate the identical dialog or vibe coding mission. Consider me, I’ve tried. I needed to ensure all the instruments I examined have been utilizing the identical immediate, however first, I needed to refine that immediate to get the most effective outcomes, so I got here up with a method to get me there.
First, I constructed the complete mission at its most simple degree with Gemini. As soon as I preferred the place the mission was (profitable and purposeful proof of idea), I requested it to create a immediate in order that I may add it to another chatbot. Gemini generated the immediate, I saved it as a file, and I uploaded it to Claude. I went by this course of once more, permitting Claude to catch and make things better I hadn’t thought of when constructing the mission and Gemini. As soon as that course of was full, I requested it to create one other immediate so I may add it to ChatGPT.
The concept was to have all three chatbots have some enter on the precise creation of the mission and, in flip, the ultimate immediate. As soon as the immediate was created, I uploaded it to all three chatbots in a separate chat to see how persistently they carried out.
The mission: The Tome Reader
This mission was born out of my frustration with Amazon’s Kindle gadgets. Anybody who likes to learn and take heed to their books can accomplish that with real-time highlighting within the app for iOS or Android, however in any case this time — practically 20 years — you’ll be able to’t do that on a Kindle. In actual fact, it wasn’t way back that customers gained the power to realize real-time textual content highlighting with the assistive reader taking part in, which is so near the app’s performance. As of proper now, you’ll be able to solely learn or take heed to an audiobook on Kindle, not each, which is laughable, and so was the concept of Amazon proudly owning all my books. I received to pondering that I may simply vibe code an answer. I name it the Tome Reader.
I needed to create an immersive e-reader net utility that will learn your books aloud to you (with real-time textual content highlighting, after all) whether or not the textual content was pasted or your personal PDF or EPUB file was uploaded. Along with studying the textual content aloud, the online app would create background music relying on the content material of the textual content in a subset of classes (impartial, gothic horror, sci-fi, nature, fantasy, underwater, western, thriller), and generate extra sound and visible results when sure set off phrases have been spoken in real-time. The whole mission was created in a single HTML file so it may run inside an internet browser with out extra dependencies.
Constructing with the chatbots: The primary spherical
Gemini
Gemini made all of the options I needed from the Tomb Reader with relative ease.
Gemini allowed me to determine how far I may stretch the operate of this net app, and thus a majority of its performance comes from Google’s chatbot. It allowed me to hash out some small points at first, which prevented the TTS voices from loading. As an alternative, it created an initialization display that will drive the voices to load after clicking on an “open” display to the appliance. With out any such know-how, the mission would not have gotten off the bottom.
Slowly however absolutely, the performance of the mission started to develop. As a result of stay sound results for sure phrases may very well be distracting, I made certain so as to add the choice to show these sound results and the background music off. After I received a base of the appliance working, I requested Gemini to create a immediate I may share with different chatbots so I may construct it elsewhere if I needed, and that is what it did.
Claude
Claude’s mission gave me essentially the most success in some areas and extra bother in others, however is my private favourite of the three check tasks.
Claude made unbelievable refinements to the underlying operate of the set off phrases on this mission. Claude prolonged the vocabulary and elevated the visualization when a set off phrase was spoken aloud. That stated, Claude made a name that I did not ask it to, although the logic certainly made sense.
Initially, I assumed the mission wasn’t working as a result of once I went to check its performance, simply the primary set off phrase would create the specified impact in a string of practically 10. It took a while for Claude to lastly reveal it had determined to solely enable the sound and visible results set off as soon as per sentence in order to not “spam” the consumer. This made a whole lot of sense, however the mission was extra proof-of-concept than purposeful reader, and Gemini and ChatGPT generated sound results for each key phrase, which was the anticipated performance.
All that stated, there was no particular instruction inside the immediate for the variety of instances the sound and visible results performed. Whereas it wasn’t essentially what I needed, I did admire the consideration of the general consumer expertise to make such a name. Then in any case of these refinements have been coded in, Claude then up to date the immediate, and I took it with me to ChatGPT.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT didn’t create extra options once I requested it to at instances, however nonetheless managed to recreate the mission completely once I gave it the ultimate immediate.
By the point I had created the up to date immediate with Claude, there wasn’t a lot else I may assume to do once I uploaded it to ChatGPT. Fortunately, OpenAI’s chatbot created the mission with ease, regardless of being the slowest at producing the code. The one operate I did ask ChatGPT so as to add to the mission — to create a devoted quantity slider for the background music so it may very well be turned off utterly if one simply needed a devoted e-reading expertise — failed persistently. Finally, I went again to Claude to ask for this performance and recreate the immediate.
Spherical 2: Recreating the identical mission
Regardless of utilizing Gemini 3 Professional to initially construct the mission and the free variations of ChatGPT and Claude, all three created the mission, however not with out points. I had spent most of my time inside Claude refining the mission, and it was liable for creating the ultimate model. So it was extremely shocking to search out out that when importing that immediate into a brand new chat, the mission would not load previous the primary “initialization” web page. Regardless of having no points in any respect with earlier iterations, it took 11 (sure, actually) extra full rebuilds to determine what was happening.
Recreating the mission with each Gemini and ChatGPT labored flawlessly. All capabilities, fundamental and superior, labored as they need to, together with file importing, check highlighting, text-to-speech output, and each audio and visible results when set off phrases have been spoken aloud. Going again to the fashions, I noticed little or no distinction in operate or efficiency when giving the identical immediate to every of the chatbots.
Chatbot inconsistencies
Buying the file to check was all the time straightforward with Claude. Not solely did it provide a preview of the mission so that you by no means wanted to obtain the HTML file in any respect, however for those who needed to (which I typically did for testing), it was made out there to obtain instantly. This feature was solely typically supplied with ChatGPT, whereas at different instances I may solely copy the HTML and reserve it by myself.
Regardless of having the fewest errors and general qualms with Gemini, it all the time required you to take the lengthy route and do it this fashion. All that apart, the truth that ChatGPT would solely typically provide to permit me to obtain the file as HTML instantly was peculiar and a little bit irritating.
The winner: It relies upon
Defining a winner for any such check is hard, as all chatbots have professionals and cons to them. In a way, all of them win. Every was capable of create a purposeful model of the mission sooner or later, but it surely typically took repeated efforts.
In the end, the winner is the consumer. It goes to point out that, whatever the mannequin getting used, a stable set of directions can get you far. I used to be unable to tell apart variations in efficiency or operate between the app created by Gemini 3 Professional versus the free variations of ChatGPT or Claude.
This truly goes instantly towards what I discovered when having the same dialog with each the Gemini professional and free fashions. Whereas that was one other day, one other mission, and one other mannequin, it goes to point out {that a} stable immediate can get you extremely far on the earth of vibe coding.
