This Mastodon post about a vibe-coded interactive history tool—which seemingly misunderstands a lot of history—illustrates how AI and vibe coding aren’t replacements for human expertise and attention to detail more generally. At most it’s a starting point.
Shamelessly self-promotional example: Over the summer I used AI to make a streaming calculator for my newsletter subscribers, where you put in the channels/services you want and it tells you the cheapest ways to get them.
I have seen versions of this where AI goes out and gets the data. They all suck, because the creators don’t really understand the space and so don’t know if the data is any good.
The real work is in understanding what every streaming service offers, what bundles exist, where they overlap, and so on.
For example: You can combine ESPN, Disney+, and Hulu at a discount. You can add NFL+ Premium for an additional discount. You can separately combine ESPN and Fox One for a discount. But you can’t combine all five services in one bundle. It’s ESPN and Fox, or ESPN and the other four. Any streaming plan you come up with then has to take these options into account.
Vibe coding a UI for this streaming calculator—something I always wanted to make for readers—took hours, but that was nothing compared to the time spent researching, paying careful attention to the details, and drawing on years of institutional knowledge. You have to know the space and you also have to give a crap about what you’re putting out. An AI scraper doesn’t necessarily do either.