I Tried Vibe Coding and Somehow Ended Up Building a Habit Tracking App

Over the past few months I kept seeing people talk about “vibe coding.”

People describing features in plain English.

AI generating the code.

And suddenly people who never considered themselves developers were building apps.

Naturally, I got curious.

So I decided to try it.

At that point I barely understood things like:

But curiosity is a powerful motivator.

A few weeks later, I somehow ended up with a working habit tracking app called Habyte.

The Idea Was Very Simple

The idea did not start with "let's build a product".

I just wanted a simple way to track habits that don’t happen every day.

There are habit apps that support this.

But honestly, I just did not feel like paying for another app.

So I thought let me try building something myself.

What I wanted was simple. A place where habits could exist across different time cycles like:

Daily

→ Exercise

Weekly

→ Call parents

Monthly

→ Review finances

Quarterly

→ Health check

So I wanted something where habits could exist across different time cycles.

That idea slowly turned into Habyte.

What Habyte Does

Habyte lets you track habits across different time periods:

You can create habits, set start and end dates, and mark them complete when they’re due.

One feature I ended up liking a lot is the task timeline.

Instead of just listing habits somewhere in the app, Habyte shows which habits are due on a particular day.

So when you open the app, you immediately see what needs to be done.

You can mark tasks complete directly from there.

There are also simple progress charts that show how consistent you’ve been over time.

Nothing groundbreaking. Just something practical.

Where Vibe Coding Felt Magical

The magical part was how quickly things started appearing.

I could describe something like:

“Create a page where users can add habits.”

And suddenly there would be:

Seeing that happen the first few times genuinely felt surreal.

But the magic fades the moment something breaks.

The Problems I Ran Into

Because I didn’t really know how most of these systems worked.

So building the app meant learning concepts while trying to fix problems.

Authentication confusion

At one point users could sign up but couldn't log in.

The issue turned out to be related to session handling with NextAuth.

At that moment I didn’t fully understand what sessions were doing.

So debugging it meant learning authentication concepts while trying to fix the problem.

Database mistakes

Another time habits were saving correctly, but completion history wasn’t updating.

The issue came down to how the MongoDB data structure was designed.

The funny part is that the AI had written the structure correctly earlier.

I broke it while trying to modify it without fully understanding what I was changing.

The “everything broke” moments

There were also moments where a small change caused the entire app to stop working.

Those moments teach you something quickly.

AI can generate code.

But when something breaks, you still need enough understanding to debug it.

And that’s where most of the learning happened.

What Building With AI Actually Feels Like

The process ended up looking something like this:

Idea

→ describe the feature

→ AI generates code

→ test it

→ something breaks

→ ask AI why it broke

→ learn something new

→ fix it

→ repeat

It felt less like traditional programming and more like a conversation where you slowly understand the system you're building.

If You Want to Try It

If you’re curious, you’re welcome to try the app.

Habyte was built mainly as a fun experiment, not a startup and not something I’m trying to monetize. The goal was simply to see how far someone without a coding background could go using AI-assisted development.

If you end up using it regularly, you can also save it to your phone’s home screen. Most mobile browsers allow you to add web apps to the home screen, and once you do that it behaves almost like a regular app. It opens in full screen and sits alongside your other apps, so you can just tap it and quickly check your habits during the day.

If you have thoughts, run into bugs, or just want to share feedback, there’s also a feedback option inside the app itself where you can send comments directly.

Since this project was built mainly as an experiment, feedback from people using it is probably the most useful thing right now.

You can try Habyte here: App link

Note:

This website was also built using vibe coding.

A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have imagined building a web app and a website without knowing how to code.

Now both exist.

They are definitely not perfect.

But they exist.

And right now that feels like enough.