A firefighter solved the most annoying part of grocery shopping. An entrepreneur found a smarter way to organize the construction of his new home. A dad figured out how to be in two places at once.
The common denominator: They vibe-coded solutions to their issues.
In our new "Vibe Code Your Life" series, we profile how non-techie people are using AI tools to solve their problems. They're chatting with AI bots like Claude or Lovable and instructing them to build apps and websites, often without writing a single line of code themselves.
Here's a look at how these three people made it happen — and stay tuned for more stories in this series.
Joe Poynton, a 44-year-old firefighter in the UK, grew frustrated by having to double back through grocery stores after forgetting items on his shopping list. Rather than accepting the frustration, he turned to AI tools to build an app that optimizes shopping routes based on how users move through a store.
Jonathan Butler, a 56-year-old entrepreneur in Brooklyn, is building a home in upstate New York. He expects it to take 18-24 months and will require blueprints, contracts, drawings, and photographs. Those all too easily get lost, so he vibe-coded a personalized document-sharing platform with his architect and contractor. It's not perfect, he says, and he's constantly refining it.
"It's like being in your wood shop making something," he said, adding he used to feel "so powerless" when he couldn't build his own websites. Now, he feels empowered.
Scott Kippler, a managing director at a hedge fund, had to juggle work while also getting his son from school and taking him to an after-school program. Instead of scouring Facebook groups for a part-time helper, he vibe-coded a solution. In a week, he created a preliminary model of Trot My Tot, a platform where parents can find short-term nannies for one-off gigs.
Are you vibe-coding? Tell me your story at [email protected]. And be sure to sign up for our weekly newsletter, Vibe Mode, where we chronicle all things vibe-coding, the new AI builder economy, and its impact on the world, from careers to markets.
Steve Russolillo is the Chief News Editor of Business Insider. He directs and drives the newsroom's coverage of business, technology, markets, finance, and innovation, overseeing reporters and editors across the U.S., London, and Singapore.Before joining BI, he spent 17 years at The Wall Street Journal in various reporting and editing roles. He helped build and then led the Journal's breaking news desk—a team of reporters, editors, and photo journalists tasked with dominating the most important stories of the day across coverage areas. Before that, he was a foreign correspondent in Hong Kong, covering markets, finance, and cryptocurrencies for the Journal from 2017 to 2020. Steve earned an MBA in finance from Baruch College and worked at Goldman Sachs in the firm's asset management division. He went to undergrad at the University of Delaware.
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