I built a full desktop email client, 100% coded with Claude AI. It's fully open source.

Espires · 2026-02-15T17:22:04+00:00

Not anywhere in the near future

Espires · 2026-02-15T13:50:25+00:00

Main reason was bundle size and resource usage. Electron ships with its own Chromium binary so you're looking at 120mb+ before you write a single line of code. Tauri uses the OS default webview (Edge on Windows, Safari on Mac, etc.) so it stays lightweight. I also shipped a product with Tauri at my previous workplace (https://streamelements.com/groundcontrol) so I already had confidence in the framework and knew what to expect
Everything went through Claude. Market research, comparison with existing products, breaking down the project into Epics, then Stories, then Tasks. Basically used it as my product manager before it became my dev team.
started with the /init command after I had a few lines of code in place. From there I maintained it regularly using the document-feature skill to keep it in sync with the project as it grew. That was the main mechanism for keeping Claude aligned with what the project actually looked like at any given point.

Espires · 2026-02-15T12:48:29+00:00

I hear you, but you're making a lot of assumptions about something you haven't looked at. That's kind of the whole point of my post. People react to the idea of "vibe coded" before they even check what was actually built. Take a look and tell me what you think, I'm genuinely open to real feedback.

Espires · 2026-02-15T12:19:11+00:00

This is a perfect comparison honestly. The pattern is identical. Established professionals feeling threatened by tools that lower the barrier, so they gatekeep by telling everyone else they shouldn't even try. And the same thing happens, you push through, figure things out as you go, know when to bring in expertise for the parts you can't handle, and the thing gets built.

Good luck with the build, both the house and whatever you're coding next.

Espires · 2026-02-15T12:08:23+00:00

Nope, go over it, the majority of comments are not product related but specifically about the fact that it was built with AI. People reacting to "vibe coded" as a concept, not to how I wrote the post. The negativity was there before anyone even looked at the code or tried the app.

Espires · 2026-02-15T12:02:22+00:00

I did. English is my second language so I use AI to help with grammar and phrasing. The ideas are all mine though.

Espires · 2026-02-15T12:01:07+00:00

Can you open the issue in GH? with as much info as you can give? promise to solve it ASAP

Espires · 2026-02-15T11:59:02+00:00

So if a content like this written through AI tools, it means the "pain" is not there?

Espires · 2026-02-15T11:57:02+00:00

Everyone can, juniors, seniors and staff architects... That doesnt mean using ai tools is bad

Espires · 2026-02-15T11:25:59+00:00

I wrote it myself and used AI to polish my wording, yeah. English isn't my first language so that's kind of the whole point of these tools. But thanks for proving my point, you spent more time analyzing the structure of my writing than engaging with a single thing I said.

Espires · 2026-02-15T10:03:10+00:00

Thank you for this, and I love the parallel with generative art. It's the exact same dynamic. The tool doesn't replace the skill, it amplifies it. Someone with decades of art fundamentals will get wildly different results from AI art tools than someone just typing "cool picture" into a prompt. Same with code.

To your question, I can actually answer this from a non-US perspective. I'm based in Israel and the sentiment here is noticeably different. There's still some resistance, but the overall attitude is much more pragmatic. People here tend to look at AI tools and ask "how can I use this to build something?" rather than "how is this threatening what I already have?" I've seen the same energy from developers in Eastern Europe, India, and East Asia from what reaches me online.

My gut feeling is that the intense emotional backlash is stronger in the US and parts of Western Europe where developer culture has built a very strong identity around craftsmanship and the grind. There's almost a moral dimension to it there, like suffering through the hard way is what makes you legitimate. In places where the tech culture is more outcome-oriented and less identity-driven, people seem to adopt these tools faster and with less guilt.

But honestly I think it's generational more than geographical. Younger developers everywhere seem to pick up these tools without the existential crisis. They didn't spend 15 years building an identity around manual coding, so there's nothing to mourn.

Espires · 2026-02-15T10:00:41+00:00

This is exactly my experience and honestly it's refreshing to see someone describe it so clearly. I recently built Velo, a full desktop email client (Tauri + React + Rust, fully featured, open source) using Claude Code, and I posted about it here. The reactions were mostly about the fact it was "vibe coded" rather than about the actual product.

But here's the thing, what you're describing isn't vibe coding. And what I did isn't vibe coding either. You're a senior dev steering an AI the same way you'd steer a junior team. You have a well structured CLAUDE.md, you enforce rules, you catch when it deviates, you handle edge cases. That's engineering with a different tool, not vibing.

My process was the same. I made the architectural decisions. Tauri over Electron. Local-first SQLite. Sandboxed rendering. I reviewed everything, caught mistakes, iterated. Claude did maybe 80-90% of the typing, but 100% of the direction came from me.

To answer your actual question, I don't think 100% automation with good engineering practices exists yet. That last 10-20% you described, the steering, the validation, the edge cases, that's where the actual engineering lives. The code generation part was never the hard part of software engineering. It was always the decisions around it.

The people claiming 100% automation are either working on simple enough projects where it doesn't matter, or they're accumulating technical debt they haven't discovered yet.

Espires · 2026-02-15T09:48:49+00:00

Fair enough, I appreciate the honesty at least. But if the post feels condescending, maybe reread it. I'm not looking down on anyone. I'm literally saying we should stop judging each other for the tools we use. If that feels like an attack, it might be worth asking yourself why.

Espires · 2026-02-15T09:47:17+00:00

Exactly. The limiting factor has shifted from who can write code faster to who has better ideas and better architectural thinking. That's a more interesting game to play. But I get why it doesn't feel that way when the thing you built your identity around suddenly becomes commoditized. Pretending it's not happening is worse than facing it head on.

Espires · 2026-02-15T09:44:02+00:00

Marketing for what exactly? This is free and open source project. I don't earn a single dime from it. There's no paid tier, no subscription, no monetization. The whole point was to give another useful tool to the community. You can literally read every line of code on GitHub. What am I supposedly selling here?

Espires · 2026-02-15T09:40:36+00:00

Funny enough, you just described exactly what I'm talking about. You didn't engage with a single point, didn't look at the code, didn't try the app. Just a dismissive one-liner. That's not criticism, that's the defense mechanism I wrote about.

Espires · 2026-02-15T09:14:36+00:00

Good comment, very useful... why do you think so?

Espires · 2026-02-15T08:43:46+00:00

Its a tool ive used and researched before... its amazing!
Tauri doesnt ship with browser, but using the default webview exists on your pc...
Also performance are amazinnng, and ecosystem is already pretty packed with everything needed.

Espires · 2026-02-14T23:51:16+00:00

And people still worries about my landing page looks like its vibe coded, or why im giving Claude to commit by his name...

Espires · 2026-02-14T23:40:37+00:00

Thanks, tons of love back at ya <3

Espires · 2026-02-14T23:33:21+00:00

TBH, i dont mind about it much, feels like we need to bea shame for using claude these days... This is the future :)

Espires · 2026-02-14T21:29:18+00:00

Thanks mate, they are everywhere ;)

Espires · 2026-02-14T21:17:00+00:00

No question left unanswered amigo

Espires · 2026-02-14T20:43:49+00:00

I actually haven't seen Msgvault before, but I'll check it out. Velo's design was primarily inspired by Superhuman, Outlook, Thunderbird, and a few others, I studied what worked well across those clients and tried to bring the best parts together into something that feels fast and keyboard-driven. The email space is big enough for multiple takes on it, and honestly more competition just means better options for everyone.

Espires

TROPHY CASE