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Stop Doom Scrolling, Start Doom Coding: Build via the terminal from your phone

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I used Tailscale, an old laptop, Claude Code, and Termius to code from my phone anywhere I have Internet connection.

Great for parties where you rather be home tinkering.

I'm using the Android terminal and Claude Code to vibecode on the go. Or rather, as a fairly boring father of two, when I'm tied up in the necessary chores of family life - cooking and cleaning. Nothing as complicated as this - just Claude Code and a fairly standard Linux dev term, but it's remarkable.

Over the recent break, across four or five sessions, I wrote a set of prompts around ~500 words in total.

The result was Claude scanning my network for active ports using nmap, fuzzing those ports with cURL, documenting its findings, self-directing web searches for API/SDK docs for my Hue bridge and ancient Samsung TV, then building a set of scripts to control my lighting system and a fully functional HTML+JS remote for my TV.

The most entertaining part was Claude prompting _me_ to pop into the living room and press the button on the Hue bridge so it could fetch an API key.

The most valuable part? The understanding I gained secondary to generative act. I now understand the button on a Hue bridge literally just tells the device to issue a new API key at the next request. I understand how Entertainment mode works, and why. I understand how Samsung SmartThings is mediated via websockets - and just how insecure decade old Samsung TVs are.

Around 500 words to gain all this? I hate to buy into the hype, but it feels inflectional.

1 month agoby magospietato

So this is the 4th+ article I've seen on using a VPN to vibe code on your phone. Would an email interface to Claude code work better?

- Email Claude to start the coding

- Claude emails you with any thing it needs acked on.

- you reply back to emails telling it what to do.

- maybe Claude can run your program and send back screen shots.

seems easier then getting a vpn working. What is the downside to using email?

1 month agoby analogpixel

> Great for parties where you rather be home tinkering.

I know this is probably in jest, but when someone invites you to a party it's not because they just want your atoms in the same room as them.

In regards to doom coding: I would chop off my arms before coding/prompting on a phone. Also, think about your cervical, neck etc! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

1 month agoby igleria

I am still trying to understand how installing Tailscale and Claude Code then connecting to your home network externally and opening a mobile terminal on your phone is a novel idea that requires a full Github writeup.

So, I do this when I am sitting on the couch and too lazy to boot up my laptop that I normally do work on, but it never gets much further than updating, pulling or pushing one or two containers, or more times than not trying to remember what port AI have something on so I can connect the companion app to it.

It's not a bad idea in full, but "death coding" is a ridiculous notion.

1 month agoby tropicalhunter

If you don't want to run your machine 24/7 (whether for electrical consumption, environmental, noise, etc reasons), I wrote an ssh proxy [1] that will send WOL packets to a target machine and hold your connection until its alive.

I then configured debian-autoshutdown [2] to turn the machine off if there's no traffic on ssh after 15 minutes.

This way I just ssh into my machine (whether via antigravity on my laptop or termius on my phone) and within 30 or so seconds its awake, no physical button presses needed. I documented the whole flow in more detail on my blog [3].

I'm now working on an improvement called machine on proxy (or mop) that will allow me to start Proxmox VMs instead of physical machines, so I can let gemini-cli run wild and if it decides to wipe the entire hard drive I can restore from a snapshot.

[1] https://github.com/simonamdev/ssh-wol-proxy

[2] https://github.com/mnul/debian-autoshutdown

[3] https://www.simonam.dev/ssh-wol-proxy/

1 month agoby purrcat259

If you're on Android and can download QPython, it works just fine and has for years. This seems way overcomplicated, it depends on a remote computer that's on 24/7? Ick.

1 month agoby chankstein38

Historically I had thought there was a pendulum swing between using local computing resources vs. having a dumb terminal to access something remotely.

But now instead of swinging back to local resources, apparently we're proposing to add a second layer of remote access (phone -> computer -> Claude servers).

1 month agoby zahlman

Does this approach work for anyone? For my life, I've found that if I'm not behind the computer then I'm not in a productive situation anyway, even with AI access. I don't have a setting where I can concentrate for a long time and think clearly. For examole when watching children, doing groceries, during transit (probably have to change train in 20m, or walking to next destination). No convenient access to a notepad and pen. On a phone it's also inconvenient to do research.

For me personally I've found two better uses of in-between time:

1. Micro exercises. Really important for health and longevity, especially when it's hard to find dedicated time for exercise.

2. Resting. This means no phone. Yeah hard to resist doom scrolling. Just relaxing muscles and breathing exercises, calming down the nervous system. Increases long term resillience and reduces stress.

So I'm a bit puzzled. If you are in a situation where you can concentrate, why not just pull out a laptop? Typing on phone is really annoying. Even complex conversations with AI I prefer doing on a laptop.

Perhaps there are coding tasks where the prompt is not too complex and it's more about writing code. But you still have to review the result. That's even more annoying on a phone than writing text.

1 month agoby FooBarWidget

Being able to “code” from your phone really feels like a huge change; it never took before because coding from your phone was miserable, but if you’re just coding by having a conversation then it might even be better to do it from your phone. I don’t know what that leads to, but it’s let me fix bugs from bed and build an MVP while moving, so I can’t complain.

For anyone looking for a more integrated and smaller approach, I built an open source app builder + runtime: https://github.com/tinykit-studio/tinykit

Basically gives you a Lovable-like app builder with built-in services (database/files/auth/email/payments/etc), content and design fields, and a code editor. Code is a single Svelte 5 file, and you can build/host unlimited apps on one server. And the server is just node + PocketBase, so runs easy on a $2 VPS. And LLM is BYOKey.

1 month agoby elemdos

> A Claude Pro subscription

"Doom Slopping" might be more fitting.

1 month agoby parliament32

I remember when I started learning coding, and didn't have a computer. I literally used to use my phone to write code - terrible experience, but I was determined

1 month agoby cliffaust

Coding on a phone really isn't something new. With tmux a lot of people created crazy things directly on their phone. In some countries this even is the only possibility to code at all, because there are no laptops.

The example use case images are very funny though! :-)

1 month agoby Aldipower

I use a bespoke hacker software keyboard (ctrl/meta/custom keys for GNU screen and emacs) and also bespoke SSH client (fork of the original irssiconnectbot) for years.

My phone is the original Pixel Fold. You would think I use it unfolded but the passport form factor lends itself to be almost as productive folded that I use it that way most of the time. Unfolded it's just a bit better experience (bigger keys / more display real estate/ more characters per line/ etc).

With that said I'm looking forward to the Click Communicator: https://clicks.tech/communicator

I've also been meaning to write about my setup and open sourcing my tools.

Oh. Writing clojure helps due to the terseness of the language. Not sure it would be a pleasant experience writing something like Java with the 80 character line limit I try to impose on myself

1 month agoby twism

Number 1 on the front page of Hacker News for explaining how to connect to a remote machine via ssh.

1 month agoby foobarqux

My flow is GitHub issues+ GitHub Copilot+ Web Deployments from GitHub actions.

I can just ask GitHub to fix something from the mobile app, and then set it to build on PR merge. It works most of the time, but you'd have to be absolutely wacky to do it in production or with any code you actually care about

1 month agoby 999900000999

I've been working on something similar: https://github.com/shepherdjerred/monorepo/tree/main/package...

Essentially you run a server on some machine. Sessions are created in Docker containers, K8s pods, or via Zellij (an app similar to tmux).

You can:

- Directly attach to sessions via Docker attach (built-in via a TUI). You get a normal Claude Code experience, but multiplexed. The switcher/UI shows you the status of Claude and the PR (pushed, merge conflicts, CI status, review status, etc.)

- Manage sessions via a web UI. Connect to Claude Code directly via your browser. You have access to the usual Claude Code terminal or a native chat view.

- Manage sessions via an app. You have access to a native chat view.

It achieves isolation via Git worktrees + a proxy so that containers have access to zero credentials (there aren't even any Claude code creds in the container), which allows you to more safely use bypass all permissions mode.

This works better for me that Claude Code on Web because I have control over the environment Claude is running in. I can give it any Docker image I want, I can have it connect to my local network, etc.

It's still a WIP (the core bits are there, but it's not polished yet), but I'm hoping it provides a friendlier UX with a similar goal for what the OP has in mind.

1 month agoby shepherdjerred

We need to take this idea further. Instead of "remote first", I'm waiting for the first company that will bodly declare "you can do all your work on your phone".

I'm tired of lugging my laptop around. Let me work from the beach with my phone and ar glasses.

1 month agoby cons0le

been using the same setup for the past 2-3 months now. My company gave the employees old mac pro (intel) for free to use for whatever purpose they want to. I was using AWS for most of my personal projects which I have now migrated to this mac. I use the app 'Amphetamine' to not let the mac sleep, and rest of the setups are the same with Tailscale + termius etc

Fun fact: once you get ssh access to mac, you can control almost anything running on it. Like I added my mac air under termius, and I could mute/unmute any videos playing on chrome using osascript from my iphone :)

1 month agoby pankajhbk007

I'm using exe.dev for something like this. Well, from a laptop, but others have done it from their phone.

I'd link to a blog post about my setup, but I'm still writing it. Here's someone else's blog post:

https://commaok.xyz/ai/just-in-time-software/

1 month agoby skybrian

Maybe I'm just lacking in creativity, but I don't see the appeal of developing anything with less than 2 monitors and a full-sized keyboard. Even for those who find the act of coding intrinsically entertaining, do you want to dance so badly that you'll do so even if you can only use one leg?

30 days agoby scottLobster

I did show hn just yesterday you don't need tailscale or any 3rd party server. Just use webrtc and it's just your mobile and laptop. end 2 end encrypted. no 3rd party dependency.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46514587

1 month agoby artpar

I prefer using a VPS instead of an old laptop. 2 improvements I’d recommend:

1. Use tmux to keep sessions alive

2. Launch Claude Code using the —-dangerously-skip-permissions flag to avoid annoying pauses in execution

It’s like having a team of full-time interns running in the cloud building your software

30 days agoby joshrw

If you have GitHub copilot you can create github issues and assign them to copilot. All you need is a browser.

1 month agoby dminor

I recommend https://happy.engineering/ . It is very easy to set up. I can have an instance in a container which contains my repository and lots of packages/binaries necessary for the work. I can then use the different binaries to run commands in the container. I was able to easily do `ls -la` in the container and email that to myself, all done from my phone. You can also connect it to applescript and whatnot in order to send sms messages, or you can connect to whatsapp. I was able to make it extract the top 5 headlines on hacker news, get the top ideas being discussed in the comments for each submission, and send all of that into my Apple Reminders for me to read on my phone.

No VPN needed.

1 month agoby kovek

Fixed IPv6 workstation, ssh (pre-shared key) and vim, 4G usb modem, a "big" screen, nice battery life, "code anywhere" on your workstation (the best would be a "backpack" modular system: a RISC-V board in its case slapped to a "big" DP/eDP screen on a stand, an usb dvorak [ortholinear|columnar] keyboard, a 4[5]G usb modem (using the USB modem standard) with a IPv6 enable mobile ISP sim card, and a rather good battery pack.

(I even use a webcam to capture what my monitor does display when I do remote coding of low level GFX oriented software! Actually my wayland compositor for linux and AMD GPUs)

BTW, IPv6 = ZERO NAT to setup, delicious.

"It's magic".

1 month agoby sylware

I already have a similar setup for developing on remote servers I've been using with tmux + goose-cli + claude via openrouter. I've found that anything claude 4.x and above becomes very expensive very quickly, with 3.7 being almost negligibly inexpensive. I'd find myself using $30 dollars of credits in a few hours of development on a small scope project. I might give the claude CLI a look specifically, but I don't expect great savings and I will miss my AI-provider-agnostic setup. Is everyone using this technology just programming as they go about their day and burning like fifty to a hundred bucks while doing so?

1 month agoby grep_name

Does anyone have any good advice or resources on a good workflow to do this with web apps? There's some stuff I'd really like to solve, for myself/family, that would require a front and back-end with persistent storage.

I would love to easily be able to set this up easily when a new idea pops into my mind and then have something running (locally or securely in some cloud) within a few hours/days. I wouldn't want to spend a ton of money for this though, nor have a lot of overhead to manage.

Edit: In addition, I'd like some safeguards where I can't have the LLM of choice accidentally delete stuff or do other unintended things on my network.

1 month agoby wickedsight

Is being able to SSH into your home machine that easy these days? I never had a strong enough reason to spend more than a few minutes trying, but I always suspected that my ISP would make this harder for me than I would hope.

1 month agoby thenoblesunfish

I don’t get it. How is this different from using the Claude iOS (and I assume Android) native app and use their “Code” option. It fires up a Claude Code session in the cloud and you can vibe code anything while on the toilet.

1 month agoby biinjo

I really want to use and like this, but I feel like I need a different UX / UI for my phone. I think adoption of this development workflow at large is going to be a design challenge more than a setup/devops one.

1 month agoby hmokiguess

I've been using a similar workflow for the past couple of months.Heavily inspired by Simon Willison’s approach of building micro tools, I’ve started building micro-utilities. I do this mostly while I'm commuting or outside or waiting for something at work.

Instead of just jotting down an idea in a notes app (and it sitting there for eternity), I’ll open up Jules, describe the tool, and have it scaffold the HTML. I have Cloudflare Pages hooked up to the repo—once Jules submits the PR, the preview branch builds automatically and I can verify the result on my phone immediately.

1 month agoby abinmn

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. But congrats on launching!

1 month agoby leetrout

I use Prompt, Ever Terminal, Whisper, EC2 and Claude Code.

I can build anything with it. Having Claude on top of a terraform repo lets me fully control my infra. Claude is so good at AWS and terraform, and it even found a $3k monthly accidental spend I had running (also sent a refund request to hopefully get some credit back).

Also have a Claude driven CI workflow in GitHub to help keep everything on track.

Having full access to the Claude Code TUI is so much better than the web or iOS interface, plus everything runs on your own setup.

And agree it has replaced doom scrolling / useless new reading.

1 month agoby ec109685

I've seen this concept a few times recently and am interested.

However, what's the benefit over just using the "Claude Code for Web" feature built into the Claude Code mobile app?

It clones your repo into a VM which has a bunch of dev tools installed, you can install additional packages, set env vars, and then prompt it remotely. The sessions can be continued from the web and desktop apps, and it can even be "teleported" into the terminal app when back at a laptop/desktop.

Would be great to understand what the differences / advantages of OP approach are.

1 month agoby mands

What does Claude add to this? I've done coding on my phone before by sshing into my home server and just... writing code. Is there a benefit to writing code through a third party instead?

1 month agoby voidUpdate

Early on in my programming life, I had very limited access to a computer. I did much of my coding in my head while walking around. In some cases, I'd literally write code in my head and dump it out when I had computer access, but abstract and creative problem solving were especially natural in a detached setting. I truly believe this time was more valuable than the time at the keyboard.

If anything, I want to do more of that: get away from the device to let my mind wander. "Doom" coding sounds apt.

1 month agoby sp9k

Is this what the kids call "being performative" looks like? If you do this in my party, then please shut the door on the way out.

29 days agoby MarchApril

It’s a simple idea but one that hadn’t occurred to me yet.

I spend hours each week riding transit, and use Claude for a bunch of side projects and have Tailscale set up already, so looks like I’ll be giving this a try this week!

Doom coding might be doomed while I’m in the transbay tube though, with awful cell service…

How’s the diff review? I rely heavily on the vs code integration for nice side by side diffs, so losing that might be a problem unless there’s some way to launch the diffs into a separate diff viewer app on the phone.

1 month agoby scottbez1

I do the same but my unifi network gives me a vpn out of the box.

1 month agoby jfroma

"2. Make sure your computer is ON and UNLOCKED When disconnecting/reconnecting power, make sure you unlock the computer. I've ran into this issue one too many times."

- this is the biggest problem that needs to be solved

- i dont want to keep my computer running 24x7 wasting power for stuff like this

- why not make a robotic arm that you keep at the computer table which can use open cv to plug the computer on when required?

1 month agoby vivzkestrel

Those demo photos are fantastic

1 month agoby bpev

Tailscale is a lot of permanent runtime overhead/latency just to avoid setting up dynamic DNS and changing a few lines in the sshd_config.

1 month agoby zamadatix

Been using exactly this setup for a year now, works great. Have to be on the same WiFi to install from Xcode to iPhone. There is a “workaround” having it deploy to TestFlight, but it’s slow. Looking for a way to forward mDNS over VPN, to bad iPhone/Tailscale don’t support it. Only possibility I found is to have a separate mobile router that support forwarding mDNS.

1 month agoby punnerud

How about using syncthing instead of ssh?

I explain: instead of enabling ssh to your computer, which may make some users uncomfortable, you use syncthing to sync the folder of the project you are working on. You can open claude code in any android terminal and keep working on the latest changes of your folder. No shell access given.

Anyone?

29 days agoby goferito

If you don’t write a single line of code that’s not coding.

Otherwise my customers are coders to. they to the same. The difference is the recipient of the order

1 month agoby croes

I see the article is still on the front page, I'd ignored it yesterday so I took a quick read. I find, being older, trying to read the tiny fonts on a phone to be difficult after a few minutes, otherwise cool idea.

Or, I thought it was cool until this passage reminded me, "coded a prototype in my downtime" that down time is supposed to be down time.

1 month agoby newsoftheday

FYI I just now caught a critical missing step of disabling IPv4 in your Tailscale settings to doom code via cell service. Many of you probably did not have an issue figuring out that missing step - but for those of you like me, apologies for not passing along the time-saving lesson learned!

29 days agoby rbergamini27

You beat me and described this setup first. I saw your post as I was writing mine. I referenced your page on my blog :D

I think TMUX also deserves a mention

https://mjqs.blog/meta/

28 days agoby mjqs

If you need this article to get the idea of using Claude Code from your phone, you won’t build anything substantial anyway.

1 month agoby tobi_bsf

I was coding a lot many years ago with a Nokia N900.

The loss of the physical keyboard ruined everything for me. I really need the sense of touch.

1 month agoby henearkr

I'm using this setup as well, and I've been as far as writing a small Telegram bot to send input to Claude when it's stopped running via a Stop Hook

https://github.com/PABannier/claude-telegram-bot

1 month agoby el_pa_b

This is cute.

My personal world changed when I discovered Nix On Droid and cloned my personal Claude Code flake which uses pnpm to keep a rolling bleeding edge version with revision controlled dots. I started using Nvim /avante and open router shortly after that, also via Nix on Droid. Game changer for those long subway rides.

1 month agoby Teknomadix

So, we've spent ages, blood, and tears building better UIs than text, and now with AI everyone is suddenly expected to type instructions on the phone? Yes, I realize this is hard to avoid for coding in particular, but generally I'm tired of typing text on my phone. And no, I don't want to talk to it either.

1 month agoby blauditore

I use Terminus with Zellij and keep about 8 sessions going with a combination of Claude and Codex, and once in a while, Gemini. It's great when you're sitting in a docotor's office lobby bored out of your skull and when you get back to your desk you just join the session and it's all right there.

1 month agoby kator

Why do you ever want to code while you are running? I run to getaway from daily grind to smell the fresh air.

1 month agoby treavorpasan

This can be done not just with Claude but also with codex and gemeni cli. Well technically anything that has a cli interface.

I run both gemeni (fee) and codex (paid), with tmux thrown in to switch between phone and laptop. Laptop runs vscode with ssh to my server but I could also use the web version of vscode.

1 month agoby not_ai

Btw this is basically Replit's entire product (replit.com). Costs some money but the UX is pretty good

1 month agoby japhib

This is awesome! But I don't think you need to say never to all those display settings. You just need to go to Battery -> Options, and "Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off", and wake for network access when on power adapter.

1 month agoby zuhayeer

I have been building a code from phone web app and doogfooding a lot - https://x.com/knivets/status/2003023386080092235?s=46

1 month agoby knivets

This makes me worry about the future where I will be unable to hire anyone that actually knows how to solve novel engineering problems via programming with a real keyboard on a real computer with their actual brains.

To be honest it is already starting to feel that way.

1 month agoby lrvick

A random thought has started to occur, maybe given how early we are in LLM tech world, isn’t it strange a lot of AI tech is being built on top of proprietary tech? In this case, it’s Claude Code

And honestly, all this free marketing has me convinced to pay for it

1 month agoby mattfrommars

I made something very similar for myself and now have decided to open it up to others if you want to help me beta test.. free for all and it sets you up with your own hetzner vps and you even share my claude code max account: clodhost.com

1 month agoby zhoujianfu

Tailscale is quite handy in remote agent coding, Sometimes I use tailscale and RustDesk on my phone to check Claude code, I also built an app called NovaAccess which bake tailscale into the app which does not confict of VPN I used.

1 month agoby mintflow

1 month agoby japoneris

I built my AI dungeon master game and play it using my phone, Tailscale, and an app called Termius.

https://github.com/derekburgess/dungen

1 month agoby spacecadet

I genuinely did that a few times. Using an ssh client to fix a commit failing CI, for example. Even launching release builds remotely. Notably once when I was on vacation and half the Scala ecosystem was waiting for me.

1 month agoby sjrd

Using this with tmux and various VPN tech. Main issue is scrolling. Termius + tmux don't scroll very well. And I've been led to believe tmux is necessary to keep sessions open when I turn off my phone screen

1 month agoby auspiv

Cursor--run in cloud seems to work just fine for this. I setup my project and then github to publish web or mobile app.... i believe claude can also take instructions from github...or am i missing something.

1 month agoby andsmi2

"Even code at the club!" haha if you're coding at the club, just go home! but also, I really wish Sony still made their micro Vaio laptops (Sony Vaio P, for instance).

1 month agoby LTL_FTC

I have been doing this with toad and opencode and it is great for those unprompted ideas that pop up while in the big blue room, but not really useful for large projects.

1 month agoby rcarmo

Pretty cool idea, I'm going to be trying this only using open source Cecli (with DeepSeek API) instead of Claude CLI because I don't have infinite $$$

1 month agoby tomjuggler

I am a huge fan of driving agents from my phone, though this is one of the places where I don’t think terminal UIs work. Agents need a web UI for phones.

1 month agoby crawshaw

1 month agoby qazplm17

This looks neat. How do you handle code verification in this workflow, especially if you want to be confident about what actually ran?

1 month agoby victorymakes

Vibe coding is such a bad word. It should be called prompting. Thats all it really is. Its like calling a point and click UI programming

1 month agoby phplovesong

I am looking for some open source terminal for iphone .I have code server running which i can just use terminal from vs code on safari

1 month agoby sabareesh

I just use Happy https://happy.engineering/

1 month agoby borisandcrispin

I might just be old fashioned but in a party with a couple of drinks in me I don't trust my ability to even vibe code well.

1 month agoby darepublic

Please mask your identifiers, unless they are already spoofed. You potentially give out a lot of your info to bad actors.

Other than that, love it :)

1 month agoby OakNinja

Chromebook maybe but I don’t see myself using a phone unless maybe it’s voice driven. Typing up lots on phones is a pain.

1 month agoby Havoc

I run Claude Code on my phone itself via Termux.

1 month agoby adhamsalama

to keep your mac awake:

    caffeinate -di

1 month agoby mritchie712

Why Tailscale instead of plain wireguard?

1 month agoby mikojan

I love this! This concept on steroids is one of the main reasons I made https://github.com/knowsuchagency/vibora after trying both happy.engineering and Vibe Kanban for remote coding. There's the claude mobile app, too, but I want to run Claude on my own hardware in a terminal

1 month agoby knowsuchagency

İ've been using Termux (and Vim) to code on my phone for years, way easier than this setup.

1 month agoby Sjeiti

I’m wary of enabling ssh/remote login. It seems like it could be an attack vector.

1 month agoby someguyiguess

Claude not needed to "code from anywhere you are" and certainly not from your phone. no LLM needed. no agents. Tailscale or any other VPN not needed

use a laptop. (trying to do it with only a phone-factor UI is madness.) have a mobile-friendly ISP if desired or needed. solved. been solved for decades

so much of the AI BS hyping is about inventing supposedly unsolved problems. like Google showing me ads to convince me to use Gemini to write a README. no thanks, kids, have been able to do that for many decades using only my brain, eyes, fingers and vi/vim

1 month agoby syngrog66

Why would I need claude code for remote programming, if I could just use ssh and tmux?

1 month agoby hambes

I was expecting this to be about using Termux or similar. Why are LLMs involved here?

1 month agoby opan

ha, I've recently been studying the original DOOM source code - does that count?

1 month agoby lifetimerubyist

My setup is very similar.

After you log in you can unlock keychain by running this command

‘security unlock-keychain’

1 month agoby LeicaLatte

Vibe coding is not coding (unless by vibe-coding you meant buttplug.io)