I stopped using vibe coding just to build apps, and started using it to bring my ideas to life

Landing pages. Mobile applications. SaaS platforms. B2B software. Personal portfolios. Learning management systems. E-commerce websites. Productivity tools. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Content management systems. Browser extensions. Project management tools.

These are just some of the things most people have traditionally associated with coding and programming. That includes me too! For the longest time, coding has largely been viewed as a way to build something functional, whether that's a website, an application, or a piece of software designed to solve a particular problem users have been frustrated with forever.

However, something I've now realized is that there's a whole other side to coding (more specifically, vibe coding) that I had never considered before. Let me explain what I really mean by that...

Coding has turned into a form of self-expression

My favorite builds aren't necessarily useful

One of my favorite AI builders, Zara Zhang, has been advocating for something I've started to think about a lot lately: the idea that coding is becoming a form of self-expression.

She explains that coding is no longer just a way to build functional software. Instead, it's becoming a medium through which people can express their creativity, share their perspectives, and turn their imagination into something others can actually experience.

She goes as far as comparing vibe coding to traditional forms of creative expression, like writing, painting, and filmmaking. The goal with all of these mediums has never primarily been to create something useful. Instead, the process of creating something can be just as meaningful as the finished product itself.

Zhang says that when someone uses software you've built, they're essentially seeing the world through your lens, even if it's just for a brief moment. She explains in an X post that they're also temporarily adopting your mental models, or essentially the way you think, approach problems, and make sense of the world, to accomplish something. In a way, the software you build becomes a reflection of how your mind works.

You can vibe-code literally anything

My imagination is doing all the heavy lifting now

All of the above has always been the case, but the reason why it's so relevant right now is because of AI-assisted coding tools. While coding has always been a way to bring your ideas to life, doing so traditionally required you to actually know how to code. Even if you did, turning a random idea into something tangible could take hours, days, or even weeks.

With tools like Claude Code, Codex, and Google Antigravity, though, that barrier has become considerably lower. You no longer need to spend hours figuring out the technical side of bringing an idea to life. Instead, you can simply describe what you have in mind in plain English and let an AI coding agent handle the implementation.

You can now quite literally vibe-code anything and everything you dream of. I'm not talking about the note-taking app of your dreams that all the developers refuse to build (though you can do that, and I've done that too) or a Chrome extension that solves that one particular frustration. I'm talking about creating things that you'd probably never even associate with coding in the first place.

Crazy idea at 3 AM you'd like to see in the real world? You can build it. Want to turn an inside joke into an interactive experience that only you and your friends would understand? You can do that, too. Think interactive stories, personalized digital scrapbooks, animated birthday cards, or even an entire website dedicated to something you love. Things that don't necessarily need to exist as fully functional applications, but are simply fun to create and experiment with.

I've started using vibe coding for everything

I'm running out of reasons not to vibe-code something

Even slide decks, which have long been associated with tools like PowerPoint and Canva, where you manually drag and drop text, images, and other elements onto a slide, can now be created entirely through lines of code. With HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can essentially turn a presentation into an interactive experience, complete with animations, transitions, and elements that respond to what you do.

I think the above is one of the best examples I have of using vibe coding as a medium for self-expression. I've previously written about how I started vibe-coding my presentation slides instead of using traditional tools, and I haven't really looked back since. I now go all out whenever I'm creating a slide deck.

Rather than restricting myself to whatever templates or design elements a tool offers, I can describe exactly what I have in mind and let a coding agent bring it to life. The same goes for posters, which I've also started creating through vibe coding instead of relying on traditional design tools.

This idea extends to interactive simulations as well. One of my favorite examples of this was actually for a physics course I was taking last semester. For our final, we had to demonstrate a lab project we'd been working on, and I was struggling to figure out how to present our work in a way that would actually do it justice.

The obvious approach would've been to make a poster explaining the project and our findings. At most, I could've made a digital poster and presented that instead. But I really didn't want to go down that route.

So, I figured, why not create an interactive simulation instead? Rather than simply explaining how our project worked through text and images, I could actually demonstrate it in action. I used vibe coding to bring the entire thing to life, and it gave me so much more creative freedom than a traditional poster ever could.

I could experiment with how everything looked, how the simulation behaved, and how someone would interact with it. Without AI-assisted coding tools, creating something like that would've been a considerably bigger undertaking, especially alongside all my other coursework.

I've even started using vibe coding to tell stories. If there's something I want to share with a friend, more often than not, I'll find myself thinking about how I could turn it into an interactive webpage instead of simply explaining it through a bunch of messages. It's a way to show someone exactly what's going through my head, rather than hoping they picture it the same way I do.

I'm not the only one experimenting with things like this

Other people are getting creative with code, too

Zara Zhang, whom I mentioned earlier, recently created a playful interactive website dedicated entirely to the things on her wishlist. She's also built a Harry Potter-style newspaper called The Toddler Times, where the images actually come to life. These are all things that most people would probably never even think of using a coding agent for in the first place, and that's exactly what makes them so interesting!

However, I think one of the most interesting examples she's shared is of someone who turned a childhood memory of competing with their mother to kill cockroaches into a playable HTML game. According to Zhang, the person who lived through that memory actually cried when playing the game. And it wasn't because the game was particularly technically impressive. It was because of the personal story and emotions behind it.

I think the above example perfectly illustrates the point I'm trying to make. Something as personal as a childhood memory can now become an interactive experience that someone else can actually play through. You don't necessarily need a business idea, a problem to solve, or even an audience. Sometimes, the story you want to tell is reason enough to build something.