Are you ready for the rug-pull?
When I open X in the morning, I'm all but guaranteed to see someone saying that they've just vibe-coded their own version of beehiiv or Asana (or any of thousands of software-as-a-service tools that the vibe coder believes have been charging too much money).
It's a growing trend that I don't anticipate slowing down anytime in the near future. The posters usually get lots of praise, and everyone wants to stick it to the corporations for having charged them too much money over the last decade.
My first thought is always the same: how many tokens did this take, and how much does vibe coding projects like this drive companies like Anthropic and OpenAI into the red? It's got to be a lot of money.
We're in the phase of artificial intelligence where there's a land grab going on. The few big players want all of us to use their platforms, and I can't help but think that we're being way undercharged when we take on a task like vibe coding Asana overnight.
Some people I follow have compared what's going on right now to what happened with Uber. I'm old enough to remember the first Ubers I ever took, and sometimes the price was jarringly low when compared to taxis. We're talking about a $3 trip home from the airport that would have cost $20 with a yellow cab.
My prediction is that in the not-so-distant future, vibe coding Asana over the weekend is going to cost as much as paying for Asana over the year. I'm just speculating, but I think we might be in the cheapest-ever phase of AI, and the consolidation at the top sure doesn't protect anyone from future price gouging.
We're in for a bumpy ride. And it won't cost 3 bucks.
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