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Over the Christmas holidays, I built three apps to replace my Google Sheets workflows: - 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸: A budget tracker that imports bank transactions and allows us to categorize them - 𝗣𝘂𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗹: A gym tracker - 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁𝘀: A daily habit tracker

I approached each project with different levels of "vibe coding." For Fintrack, I wrote most code myself or carefully reviewed every line. I wanted to understand exactly where data is stored and how it flows through the system (for obvious reasons 😅).

For Pumpel, I ran a pure conversation experiment: How far could I get without even looking at the code? And yes, it works. But I don't like it. Worse, adding new features through prompting gets progressively harder.

Components bloat, there's no clear structure for sharing logic or components, and the codebase becomes increasingly fragile.