My Vibe Coding Adventure Continues: Creating Learn-Reels

May 3, 20257 min read

Last week, I shared my journey with vibe coding, a trendy approach where you team up with an AI coding assistant to build apps by giving high-level instructions. After a rocky start, I successfully built a tech blog website and a movie recommender app called FlickVibes using Cursor, an AI-powered coding tool. The experience was a great, turning months of work into hours of creative flow. Fueled by that excitement, I dove into another project: a learning app called Learn-Reels. Here’s how it went, including the highs, lows, and why I’m taking a break from vibe coding.

What Is Learn-Reels?

Learn-Reels is an app that transforms the addictive scroll of Instagram Reels into a productive learning experience. Users swipe through bite-sized "reels" that act like flashcards, quizzes, or info cards, making learning fun and engaging. My goal was ambitious: build the entire app using vibe coding without writing a single line of code myself. Spoiler alert—it worked, but it came with some serious challenges.

The Magic of Vibe Coding

Using Cursor, I described what I wanted: a sleek, mobile-friendly app with a card-swiping interface, progress tracking, and quiz features. I kept my instructions clear, like “create a swipeable card system like Instagram Reels” or “add a quiz card with multiple-choice answers.” Cursor delivered a fully functional app in just a few days. The UI was clean, the swiping was smooth, and the learning cards were spot-on. I was amazed by how far agentic AI has come, t felt like having a creative partner who could turn my ideas into reality at lightning speed.

Watching Learn-Reels take shape was thrilling. I didn’t have to mess with CSS layouts or debug JavaScript errors. Instead, I focused on the big picture: what should the app feel like, and how could it make learning addictive? Vibe coding let me prototype an idea that would’ve taken weeks, if not months, to build solo. By the end, I had a polished app that I’m proud to share: Learn-Reels.

The Caveats of Vibe Coding

But vibe coding isn’t flawless, and Learn-Reels exposed its limits. Here’s what I ran into:

Context Loss: After a while, Cursor would lose the app’s context and start over without warning. It generated code that didn’t fit, forcing me to repeat instructions to get back on track. This was frustrating and slowed me down.
Unwanted Changes: Cursor sometimes tweaked parts of the app I didn’t mention, like changing the color scheme or restructuring navigation. These surprise edits were annoying and meant I had to constantly check its work. (I was able to mitigate upto a certain level using "Rules" but it doesn't mitigate it completely)
Bugs and Fixes: Learn-Reels has bugs; some small, like UI glitches, and others more serious, like broken quiz logic. Fixing them with vibe coding alone has been a nightmare. Cursor’s attempts to patch bugs often introduced new ones, and the process felt like chasing my tail. The app’s codebase, entirely generated by AI, is complex and unfamiliar, making it hard to debug without diving in manually.
Disconnected from the Code: My goal was to avoid coding, but when things went wrong, I had to intervene. The problem? The code felt alien. After relying on vibe coding, diving into the codebase was like deciphering someone else’s work. Coding, which I usually love, became a chore for the first time. ("fist-time" might be a bit extra - i feel same during PR reviews...)

The bugs in Learn-Reels have been particularly tough. What started as a fun prototype is now a maintenance headache, and vibe coding alone isn’t cutting it for fixes. The lack of familiarity with the code and Cursor’s hit-or-miss bug fixes have made me rethink my approach.

Taking a Break from Vibe Coding

Building Learn-Reels was a wild ride, and I’m thrilled with what I achieved without writing code. Vibe coding is incredible for prototyping—it lets you turn ideas into reality fast, especially for solo creators. But it’s not perfect. Clear communication with the AI is critical, and when bugs pile up or maintenance gets tricky, the cracks start to show. For a complex app like Learn-Reels, vibe coding feels like a great starting point but a shaky foundation for long-term development.

I’m ready to step back from vibe coding for a bit. The experience has been eye-opening, but I want to reconnect with coding in a way that feels more hands-on. For my next project, I’m planning to build an app using auto-suggestions instead of full-on AI code generation. I’m thinking about trying GitHub Copilot, which offers code completions while letting me write most of the code myself. I’m curious to see how it feels; will it give me the control I’ve been missing while still speeding things up? I’m hoping it’ll help me feel at home with the code again, unlike the alien codebase vibe coding left me with.

Where I Stand Now

Learn-Reels is live, bugs and all, and I’m proud of what it represents: proof that vibe coding can create something polished and functional, even without coding. But the bugs and maintenance struggles have shown me its limits. Not immediately, but after a while, I'll be experimenting with shorter, focused vibe coding sessions to avoid context loss and being ultra-specific in prompts to prevent unwanted changes. For bug fixes, I will be considering reviewing the generated code to understand it better, even if I didn’t write it.

Check out Learn-Reels and let me know what you think! I’m taking a breather from vibe coding to explore tools like GitHub Copilot, but I’m not done with AI-assisted development. I want to test vibe coding on a production app someday to see if it can handle scalability and collaboration. For now, I’m excited to code with a bit more control and rediscover what makes building apps fun.

If you’ve tried vibe coding or tools like Copilot, I’d love to hear your thoughts. This journey is far from over, and I can’t wait to see where it leads next.

Check out my Learn-Reels app here

-- Kalyan

Note: This article was written with AI assistance.