Pencils down: We share our vibe-coded websites

“I have gotten dandelion greens every week, David. Every week.” That’s Jake Kasternakus, midway through a month-long experiment in vibe coding, explaining why he built a website to give away vegetables from his CSA share. He is not alone. On this episode of The Vergecast, David Pierce reconvenes with Jake and Hayden Field to show off the websites they built using AI coding tools — Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini — to solve real, small problems in their lives. The results are a mixed bag of genuine utility, maddening friction, and a clear-eyed lesson about what these tools are actually good for.

The tools are not all the same, and they are all frustrating

Each host chose a different platform, and each hit a different wall. Jake switched from Claude Code (which he had enjoyed for a previous to-do app and email client) to Codex for this project. It was a disaster. Codex would hit a permission wall, declare itself stuck, and refuse to continue — forcing Jake to start a new chat thread each time. By the end, he had seven separate threads for one project. “It would hit into something that it didn't realize it couldn't get access to and it would just be like, 'That's it. I'm done. Nothing I can do anymore.'” He notes that the workflow of starting fresh threads for each feature is actually what sophisticated developers recommend, but it felt like failure in practice.