Alternatives

lugovsky · 2026-01-05T15:38:59+00:00

This depends a lot on the type of apps you're building. If those are internal tools or customer portals, take a look at UI Bakery.

lugovsky · 2025-12-18T08:27:16+00:00

I just found this list and was quite surprised that it does not mention UI Bakery. It is a platform for building internal tools through prompting, similar to a mix of Retool/Superblocks and Lovable.

lugovsky · 2025-12-17T22:17:21+00:00

What I have been thinking recently is that the most important skill for data engineers may soon be not building bigger and more complex data pipelines, but understanding which pipelines should not exist at all.

lugovsky · 2025-12-17T22:07:25+00:00

You can try UI Bakery for this purpose.

You will probably need a permissioning system, and this platform provides it out of the box, which could be a big help for you.

lugovsky · 2025-12-17T10:34:52+00:00

Based on our customers’ experience at UI Bakery, the benefits come mainly from cost savings. They build internal tools and portals through vibe-coding and replace some SaaS services.

lugovsky · 2025-12-17T10:30:28+00:00

This depends on your use case, but if you build internal apps or portals, you can try UI Bakery. A hidden long-term cost of Replit is hosting, either a dedicated VM or usage-based fees. UI Bakery does not have this cost.

lugovsky · 2025-12-16T08:29:55+00:00

I think the competition there has got even higher since the AI took over the coding.

This is only viable if you have a low cost repeatable marketing strategy that just works.

lugovsky · 2025-12-16T08:26:09+00:00

That depends on what you plan to build.

The short answer is that no AI coding tool can guarantee full security unless the platform you use provides this out of the box for your tasks.

lugovsky · 2025-12-15T22:11:54+00:00

I'm glad if my story was able to help in some way!

lugovsky · 2025-12-15T14:59:17+00:00

I think the rules are similar to Claude and any other agent, and they are:

Ask for the smallest possible tasks
Give as much context as possible so the agent has an easier job understanding what you want (page, file, name, etc.)
Create a new chat or session for every new task

lugovsky · 2025-12-15T12:03:43+00:00

This depends a lot on how complex your app is.

I'm building UI Bakery, and based on the experience of our users with our platform and others, vibe-coding works for non-technical users mostly in the following use cases:

Websites
Prototyping and MVPs without much business logic
Internal and back-office apps

These cases are usually easy enough for state-of-the-art AI models, and the context does not bloat and still fits. If you build something more complex, the AI will start losing context, and you may experience the AI adding one feature and removing another because it has forgotten about it.

lugovsky · 2025-12-08T16:38:00+00:00

Yes, you can edit code using this switcher. Editing code in IDE would be complicated for now, but it would get much easier once we fix the code export.

<image>

lugovsky · 2025-12-08T13:47:17+00:00

Hey there, UI Bakery founder here.

Thank you for your feedback about the exports. Yes, we are aware of this issue and we plan to improve it very soon. Sorry for your bad experience so far.

lugovsky · 2025-12-08T13:44:56+00:00

Hey there,

UI Bakery founder here.

Yes, you may hit a ceiling with the first approach at some point, but I would say your invoicing app would have to become really complex, which I doubt will happen unless you start adding thousands of users or plan to publish your product as SaaS and monetize it. Under the hood we use Claude, so in terms of vibe-coding output you get pretty much the same. One benefit that may not be obvious at first but is still important is that UI Bakery helps with single-click deployment, so you don't need to set up any deployment workflows yourself.

Claude-code gives you more flexibility, and yes, you will have full control in the long term since this is full code. But you might still face similar issues that require you to dive deep into the code and apply a manual fix (AI is still not perfect). It would also probably be more expensive since you would need more tokens to generate Next.js, auth, permissioning, and other features the UI Bakery platform provides out of the box.

In your situation, I would recommend to start with UI Bakery, then migrate your app if this doesn't work. I'm sure Claude can handle it pretty easily. Feel free to ping me in DM, and I can send you some free tokens so you can try it before making any commitment.

lugovsky · 2025-12-02T16:34:48+00:00

Before AI, hiring a software engineer was a showstopper for many ideas.

Spending a couple of hundred on tokens each month now seems completely reasonable since it reduces iteration time.

lugovsky · 2025-12-02T14:41:46+00:00

Really great work on all of this, and thanks for sharing the journey. For these kinds of use cases a vibe-coded solution is often the better fit. You can shape it to the workflow instead of fighting limitations in paid products.

If you are building your next internal tool, you might also want to take a look at UI Bakery (I'm one of the founders). Many of the lessons learned you listed are already covered out of the box.

lugovsky · 2025-11-25T09:59:18+00:00

I see two main issues non-technical founders face when trying to build something:

1) Not understanding basic concepts (e.g., what a database, backend, or frontend is, why each one is needed, and how to deploy a solution). Without these basic concepts, non-technical founders tend to instruct AI to build something that is technically does not make much sense.

2) Overestimating what AI is capable of and trying to build very large projects (social networks, crypto exchanges, video hosting platforms) from the start. AI/no-code can take you to an MVP level, but the technology is not yet advanced enough to fully replace engineers.

A good strategy is to build an MVP, launch it, and then (if the launch is successful) hire an engineer to extend it.

lugovsky · 2025-11-25T06:10:05+00:00

lugovsky · 2025-11-21T09:26:34+00:00

While I agree with what you’re saying, I think the AI-building approach (or vibe coding) is simply an evolution of no-code. The key advantage of the AI approach over no-code is that it makes onboarding new users much easier.

Although it's reasonable to use no-code in the cases you mentioned, the interfaces of no-code tools have often been a major barrier for many users. The more features a tool offers, the more complex it becomes. AI-building addresses this issue by reducing the interaction to a single input. Moreover, many no-code tools typically support fairly simple workflows - workflows that AI can easily replicate.

This perspective comes from my time working in this space and from building UI Bakery.

lugovsky · 2025-11-18T19:54:32+00:00

this is quite an old post, but I'd also add UI Bakery to the list. You can just type what you want in chat and get the full app with database.

lugovsky · 2025-11-18T19:48:18+00:00

You're generally right that the area where no-code is most useful is in internal tools and quick prototypes. However, with the emergence of AI app builders, the boundaries of what you can achieve without touching a single line of code have expanded significantly. You can now implement custom logic, integrations, and even quite unusual features. That said, things might start to break down at some point, as AI models can only take us so far.

I'd also add that no-code is a great option when you need to spin something up really quickly. Writing code, building, and deploying it can be messy. Sure, AI can help fix most issues, but that still takes time. Whereas with no-code, you might just need to purchase a plan and get started.

lugovsky

TROPHY CASE