How to Pick Your First Vibe Coding Project

By the end of this post, you’ll have 2–3 personally exciting ideas ready to vibe-code with AI tools; even if you’ve never written a line of code in your life.

What Is a “Vibe Coding” Project, Anyway?

Think: low-stakes, high-fun. The kind of mini-project you could knock out in a weekend and proudly show off on Monday morning.

A good starter vibe coding project is:

AI-boosted: You + ChatGPT (or your tool of choice) = cheat-mode pair programming.
Curiosity-fueled: It solves a you-shaped problem, not a textbook one.
Tiny but mighty: Big energy, small scope.

Mindset Before You Brainstorm

Permission to Be Weird

The dumber it sounds, the more you’ll actually want to finish it.

One Sticky Note Max

If your idea doesn’t fit on a single Post-it, cut it down until it does.

Failure = Feature

Every time you break something, you’re writing a tutorial in your brain for free.

Five Idea-Mining Exercises (No Coding Required)

Exercise	What to Do	Example Spark
Annoyance Audit	List repetitive tasks that make you sigh.	Rename 200 screenshots → `YYYY-MM-DD-location`.
Hobby Hack	Pair hobby with “tracker,” “bot,” or “generator.”	Ukulele Chord-of-the-Day text bot.
Social Media Mad-Libs	Scroll a feed, note every “I wish there was an app for…”	Meme-to-Markdown blog converter.
Friendly Theft	Remix an open-source toy. Change theme, add weirdness.	Pac-Man → Task-Man (👻✅).
Random Prompt Roulette	Ask ChatGPT: “Give me 10 micro-projects for someone who loves ___.”	Cabbage Recipe Generator (for your veggie phase).

Tool Stack Shortcuts:
Want glue-code magic without spinning up servers? Try Airtable, Zapier, Make, or Pipedream. These let you build workflows fast—no backend bootcamps required.

Scoring & Selecting Your Winner

Use this quick rubric to pick your winner:

Idea	Excitement (1-5)	Can Build in ≤10 hrs?	Learn 1 Thing?	Saves Time Weekly?

Ask yourself:

Excitement Level: “Would Future You demo this at a party?”
Time-Box Reality: Can you ship something in ≤10 hours?
Skill Stretch: Will you learn a new trick (API, scraping, auth)?
Reuse Bonus: Could this save you 5+ minutes a week?

Turning an Idea Into a Plan

Write a one-sentence user story
“When I press a Stream Deck button, the script posts a dad joke to Slack.”
Break into MVP check-boxes
- UI (Button? Voice? Keyboard shortcut?)
- Data source (Spreadsheet? API?)
- Output (Text? Notification? LED light?)
Ask your AI
For each checkbox, prompt ChatGPT or Copilot to draft starting code.
Keep a “YAGNI” list
Cool-but-later ideas live here. Keeps you out of scope creep quicksand.

Common Pitfalls & How to Dodge Them

Tutorial Hell

Watching 8 videos and coding zero lines? Try: paste one snippet, tweak until weird.

Framework FOMO

Use the stack you can install in under 5 minutes. If it needs Docker, it’s probably not a vibe.

Perfection Paralysis

Ugly but working > Beautiful but imaginary.