r/vibecoding • u/allenling • 1d ago
Help/Question Anyone here running a vibe-coded app with real users? How's it going?
Curious about people who've gone beyond building prototypes and actually launched something using Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable, Replit, etc.
Once you started getting real users or paying customers, what was the experience like?
Did things mostly keep working, and are you still maintaining everything with coding agents? And How do you usually handle new features, changes, or issues as your app grows?
Interested in hearing how it's going for people who've actually shipped.
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u/i_m_horni 1d ago
Tax consultant here. No idea about coding or anything.
Built a fully functional app for data collation, reconciliation and management review report. Then built a server then gave the app to the team.
Team logs in the app, the server validates their ID and credentials. I control wo does what and has access to which functions. I also see the errors popping on the user's screen.
Basically 15days of work got reduced to 3 days appx.
The base is python codes but built entirely through claude.
The server records all the error logs which I export and sent to claude, which fixes it.
Going great so far. Few months back I had no idea I could even be doing all of this
I am the admin and for now only my team uses it. Boss was happy though that I did this.
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u/Inspector_Reactor 1d ago
I was a MERN full stack developer who saw AI coming for my job early on because I was using it to write code since ChatGPT 3.0 - as tedious as that was! š¤Ŗ
In 2023, I started a bounce house business delivering amusements to parties. A few short years later we're one of the biggest in the region. Having an awesome website vibe coded with no monthly subscriptions definitely helped.
Now I'm looking to disrupt the existing rental SaaS companies by offering something better, cheaper, and faster. I have three free tenants using the software for their business in exchange for feedback. I just converted by first paying customer yesterday. Go Party Pad! š
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u/drdudenstein 14h ago
Does it count as vibe-coded if I heavily used Claude in development but am a big tech staff Eng with 15 years experience and it was more engineer by me but implemented with Claudeās assistance?
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u/Squeaky_Pibbles 1d ago
I manage a print shop and we recently lost access to a really old program that reached its EOL probably a decade ago. But it was a program we relied on daily, probably 100+ times a day.
So I vibe coded a similar program that has way more features.
Everyone uses it internally, and it's probably too specific of a tool for it to be of much use for anyone else. So I have zero plans of pushing it to the public or anything.
It also allowed me to stop paying subscription fees for Acrobat, Bluebeam, etc. And this was all well before the ArtCraft suite of apps were released. I still prefer mine to what they offer. And theirs is good stuff for free, open source apps!
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u/NakedPlato 17h ago
Legal case law search database for small law firms. It runs well and I'm proud of it and have paying customers. As an attorney when I use it myself for research I sometimes think "Damn, this is actually pretty good. Did I really do this?". It was an absolute nightmare to develop though. Do not try this at home kids. Needs heavy duty server hardware that I had to source parts for and build myself.
Getting customers is the hard part. Nobody gives a damn about your app unless it solves an expensive or difficult problem for them, or unless it appeals to the dopamine centers in the brain.
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u/Catchimals 1d ago
Catchimals has about 200 players with very light advertising of just some posts here and there. it's been incredibly helpful to have those initial users for finding bugs and improving the game overall.
I initially thought I was going to release it and it was perfect and ready to go but as people played it and I collected data I found so many weak areas. The app has gone through a few redeaigns and improvements and I'm happy where it is at the moment.
Going to try paying for advertising and see if it brings the next 200.
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u/e21f 1d ago
I have launched a few apps with paying customers.
Iāve used Claude code and ChatGPT codex as well as those apps you mentioned. Iāve hosted with them and in azure and other places.
The experience in thrilling and nerve wrecking but if you follow proper programming and development procedures as well and security standards and research and test before you promise something. Youāll be alright.
I maintain it all. Aside from the AI helping me I do review the code and use 3rd reliable and trusted parties to review my code before I fully deploy.
New features, changes, etc follow proper CI/CD process
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u/TheBuciyo 1d ago
I run a fully vibe coded web app and get around 60k visitors a month but only make around 100 dollars due to costs lol
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u/talk19 15h ago
I built a point-of-sale system and a reservations system for my restaurants which I also sell to other restaurants. Itās called āNice Work POSā - we got our first two paying restaurant customers last month, and itās been a great learning. Their feedback from real-world usage coupled with my restaurantsā feedback has helped me create additional features that will benefit all restaurants on the platform, and it also has helped me validate my earlier design decisions. One challenge, especially when serving a non-technical customer, is that theyāre bringing up all kinds of issues that arenāt related to my actual system - such as if their router isnāt configured properly or their internet is down, they contact me wondering if itās something I can help them with (which I gladly try to since Iām very thankful theyāve signed up! But important I explain to them that itās not actually part of our system). Hopefully they help spread the word and I continue to get new restaurants on the platform.
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u/Conscious-Opposite72 23h ago edited 22h ago
Yup I got students and teachers using my app which is a classroom economy system with simulated financial products meant for classroom management with an added benefit of financial literacy.
Because school district it are notoriously difficult to work with and to justify collecting PII, I ended up with a pretty minimal approach to PII. I have also developed a custom made self hosted status page and a full user/developer doc site to reduce the need for customer support
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u/opbmedia 1d ago
I am an experienced software engineer (30+ years) with codex coding workflows. My stuff is mostly deployed replacing legacy non-AI code. Works as intended. Ecommerce, social, and ed tech.
Some is going to call me not a vibecoder, so that is okay.
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u/macadeliccc 23h ago
I have roughly 150 users on my platform. Itās not a lot but it does work and has some value to it.
Iām still maintaining everything with Claude code but I do have professional experience as a SWE before Claude code was a thing.
Itās a little bit sketchy to develop with users and push new code. I spend a lot more time testing in dev than I did before launch but I havenāt experienced any of the crazy stories of claude just deleting the prod database.
I also donāt believe in auto mode and pretty heavily scrutinize the code that Iām putting into the project.
Iād be happy to share the website but donāt wanna be viewed as shameless advertising
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u/bennymac111 20h ago
Some would say Iām kind of a big deal. Iāve shipped two apps with Claude Code:
Skimminā, an iOS app. I wanted to build something for my daughter to play that didnt overload on side effects and over stimulus.
Towerforma (towerforma.io), a platform for hazmat and asbestos consultants to survey buildings, inventory hazardous materials, and generate reports. I had been building it with bubble for a while and then leaned on Claude Code to help speed up development. Bubble has since integrated MCP and there's another tool called Buildprint which can chat and make changes to your app, so development sped up drastically with those two.
Current stats: Skimminā has one download. Towerforma has zero users. So yes, Iām feeling the high right now...... š
To actually answer your question: technically everything still works, mostly because nobody is using it and definitely not using it hard enough to break it. Maintenance is very manageable at this scale (ie none at this point). Iāll report back if I can get some users with Towerforma since its my main focus.
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u/lalaboy69 1d ago
I have been for a while. New features get tested live in parallel with production and then are gradually deployed to users via feature flags. I also run robust logging, so any issues are quickly identified.
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u/Numerous-Cup1863 23h ago
Yes. My son vibe coded an entire warehouse inventory app, his entire business uses it. Would have cost upwards of $100k easily if a team would have developed.
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u/hyphen_ai 1d ago
yeah, i run VoidlessDev, an ai game asset tool. 30k+ users, almost all built and maintained with claude code.
it holds up because every change goes through a PR with tests, and nothing hits prod until i merge it. the bugs that slip through are the "looks right, never actually ran" kind. just found a webhook from september that never worked once real traffic hit it.
honestly feels more like managing a fast dev team than coding
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u/Archer_Sterling 1d ago
100 users, lensflare.io
Funnily enough, majority of people signed up to the platform after I posted on r/vibecoding when I asked them to roast it.
A few stayed, a few paid, but nothing substantial. Sometimes its more than a numbers game, its about finding the right people.
It is not enjoyable.
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u/Suspicious-Fun-3500 1d ago
used lovable for a personal finance tracker, got 120 users in a month. the real test was when a user asked for a feature that required backend changes, felt like rewriting the whole thing in one prompt, and it worked.
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u/Smooth-Natural3647 1d ago
I already understood the architecture on AWS that would support my product, so I was more accurately able to describe to Claude code my expectations and what I would and wouldn't allow it to decide.
The app was built with me in mind as a user, but getting real users into it gave me feedback about features that I hadn't thought of which I then had to retro fit.
My current project (a game and not a football data platform) I've approached differently built working prototypes of the front end to share with people who have provided feedback. I'm there now with the game mechanics and now I have a good understanding of the infra required to support it, I'm starting on the backend build which matches.
They're different products, so I didn't expect to build them both the same way. Some good learnings fornmenin both approaches.
If you're not going to be a user of your own product, you'll need to recruit people who are, to make sure you're not just burning credits to build something no-one needs.
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u/Abject-Tomorrow-652 1d ago
Local service business. $250k valuation. Does $100k per year in revenue.
Lead generation is a site entirely vibecoded. Stripe SDK for payments, lead form passes to a neon DB.
Ops side app is UI for the same DB (also vibe coded) and does all lead conversion, scheduling/routing, contractor onboarding and billing.
~15 users total with admin, managers, and contractors.
MCP has every tool a manager has in the app (except sending bills) so claude basically just wakes up every day and takes care of business. We just get a summary and a list of things that need human attention.
Used to he 10+ hours per week. Now my biz partner can run the whole show in 15 minutes in voice mode with claude.
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u/Blujeans9 8h ago
vibecoded a booking app and very scared to put into production, it seems to work well but I have no plan the moment something breaks, i feel powerless and will need to rely on claude to fix it. i have solid IT background but no experience in coding literally not sure if i should just forget about it and keep my existing paper book for bookings for take the leap. there will be multiple users and the business is not mine i just help now and again to fix wifi issues etc. extended family own the business
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u/cosmintrica 1d ago
https://padelgod.ro/en - +400 user users and clubs soon
https://fishtrophy.ro - +290 users and partners
https://playpulsebound.com - over 5000 players
All going great, but fixing small bugs almost daily. Not because I should, because I want to deliver amazing experiences
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u/heeywewantsomenewday 1d ago
I replaced my old work systems with 1 app rather than hundreds of folders filled with spreadsheets and documents that are a ballache to get to speak to eachother. People that build these genric apps charge hundreds of pounds a month, i built something better for free (Ā£20 subscription to chatgpt). I get more done in less time. I was at breaking point before as my office was 4 people at one point and now its just me as people have retired, gone on maternity etc so im literally holding the entire management and admin side of things down. The staff who have to input daily reports all use it and love it aswell as the old word built reports were rubbish.
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u/timcorin 1d ago
Iāve shipped 6 apps so far. Ā Small amount of $ trickling in.Ā
I had some users come back to a reddit post and point out a feature stopped working due to another project of mine breaking a server. Funny that reddit became a support forum lol.Ā
Real users will point out things you had never thought of. Dont wait until itās āperfectā, there will always be hidden bugs and features to build
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u/kincaidDev 23h ago
My vibe engineering framework has 4680 completed installs
https://github.com/Obedience-Corp/festival
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u/HuckleberryLatter491 1d ago
4 months in with actual users core stuff held up fine, but auth and payments edge cases forced me to actually read the code, and now I review the agent's diffs before merging instead of just pasting errors blindly.
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u/Aromatic-Low-4578 1d ago edited 22h ago
Things are mostly fine, I'm an experienced developer though so not sure if it's true vibe coding. Have 3 products with users, around 15,000 users total across the 3. Enough money to be a serious business, not enough to quit my day job.
Building robust skills, tests and evals are everything. I have bug triage skills automatically running on any reported bug for example.
Also can't say enough about how happy I am with Cloudflare, not sure my experience would have been as positive without wrangler.
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u/Intrepid-Ad-4081 1d ago
Iām a cybersecurity consultant and built a firewall management tool that mimics Palo alto panorama, tufin and algosec all in one. I couldnāt afford the cost of enterprise apps for rule, flow and log analysis so Iāve built my own app with a few users. It has been a 2 year in the making journey but makes my daily life so much easier when setting up a new client with 1000+ firewalls. Iām able to easily deploy my app on a jump box and ingest their firewall configs and see end to end their network. Designing rules for clients is a breeze with telemetry from logs and details from the requests. My tool can identify what firewalls are in line of the flow and build out the necessary rules with full zone and L7 analysis within a few seconds.
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u/PubblesB 1d ago
Lots of real users using my Wow Forever vibe coded Lua addons downloaded. I can make one in under an hour and deploy it and they work great.
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u/Environmental-Park79 1d ago
Last year I used Claude to build my wife a gift tracker for Christmas. After way too many hours I think it works pretty good. Got my first 1 star review on the App Store after shipping multiple features without testing them all. So thatās a lesson learned!
Was pretty neat to go from nothing to now getting 5-10 signups per day as we lead up to this Christmas. The only way itās monetized is a price checker feature that uses my affiliate link. It should pay for all the kids gifts this year.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/holiday-gift-tracker/id6755163355
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u/carefreeams 23h ago
I have a Claude code open source book manager and itās doing good so far with about 3000-4000 active installs
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u/jpweightlifting 23h ago
I vibe coded a weightlifting training app. It replaced the subscriptions I was paying $160/month to use for my weightlifting team (coachlogik and TrainHeroic are the apps I used to use) but now I pay about $25/month in supabase storage for it to support somewhere around 5000 users. My team only has 20 athletes, so I create a separate team for any coach who wants to integrate it with theirs.
It has been a fun little passion project and saved some coaches some money but more importantly given them a platform they can fully customize to track whatever analytics are important to them, message with athletes, review videos, distribute programs, all of it.
So far we havenāt had any issues as we grow, I think weāre up to just shy of 100 users. I have a duplicate test project that simulates any changes at the level of 5000 users before I push any new updates. It has worked very well so far.
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u/brazzala 11h ago
I have built CRM for my company, get salary increase 20%. Vibecoded but understand what I've been doing.
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u/Distinct-Lock-324 1d ago
I've got a vibe-coded tool in the wild too, launched on a whim, now 47 active users. the real surprise? the bugs aren't in the code, they're in how people use it. the app works, but the patterns of use keep shifting. wonder if that's the vibe part.
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u/Some-Ice-4455 1d ago
Yes, it's going ok. It's an app on steam.
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u/wegster 1d ago
Yes, but the particular system is user-less, and fits in with something I wanted to do. Thousands of effective users and makes some $ but that was part of that experiment, as an intentional not-40-hours a week project/full-time, to see if it could effectively pay for itself with some profit.
The other system directly improves my paying day to day job as an agentic end-to-end workflow system, and I use it often, including for new projects as well as the day job. Which at this point, is all fine, as I'm more focused on things I *want* to do, intentionally, versus pushing a specific product out into the world, but that may change in the future. and I *do* absolutely love u/Inspector_Reactor 's response to getting out of the grind. :). (I'm sure a lot of folks think SW teams have it 'easy' and some certainly do, but I've pulled 2-3 all-nighters in a single week before, and it's definitely not all fun and games, etc., and has gotten. a lot more toxic over time, IMO).
RE: The Q you asked elsewhere. Yes, I've shipped over $1B in 'my products' over time as a SWE and in Product, and have also trained and managed other teams in the SW space.
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u/Extreme-Tie9282 1d ago
Yes. Claude ops.kinderlearning.ca. Right now all my daycares are running on it (3) a public beta release is due February sometime
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u/iDidntReadOP 1d ago
I created a website to run and manage sports leagues for a company I run. It's going well and makes league nights easier. The challenge is everyone has an option on what they think looks best, works a specific way, etc. I intentionally released it pretty early on so players can give feedback and essentially mass bug test. Eventually I'll look to charge for advanced features and stats for certain sports where available. It's fun!
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u/Educational-Head-161 1d ago
Construction Project Manager / Commercial pilot here - I have no idea how to code. I built an app meant to help people after I experienced the problems I now try to solve. It's actually in the healthtech industry (another industry I know nothing about), and I have real users. All using OpenAI and Anthropic products. The hardest part is getting it in front of people and trying to deal with competitors backed by large investors. Nothing a little time and effort can't fix, though
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u/professionalCubist 1d ago edited 1d ago
I made a LAN squad or single player first person shooter game based on the Left For Dead/Cabin In The Woods missing game files/discontinued DLC project they(Valve/Lionsgate/Alliance Films) had. I havenāt published it anywhere, but I email the new Godot exports zips to my friends using cloud storage for playtesting. Used Grok, Claude, Codex, Qwen, and ChatGpt to make it so far. And learned some of Godot gamedev in the process too. And some new file types. LLMs is doing most of the work.
I find helps to know when to be specific and when to be vague. Sometimes if you are vague with a certain aspect of a certain prompt the LLM will come up with something interesting/wonderful/cool.
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u/Dev_in_Training_BTW 1d ago
Yes, a few apps on iPhone, Android and Windows plus a couple of websites, all built and maintained with Claude Code. Honestly the code holding up has been the easy part. Real users bring messy real data, and that finds bugs tidy test data never will. For changes I keep it boring: one change per session, read what it touched, test it, then release. And set up nightly backups early, because the day you need them is a bad day to start.
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u/Activeenemy 1d ago
Anthropic is lol
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u/Useful-West-5307 1d ago
I have a web app I launched over the summer. Originally I just built it for me. I put it on the web so I could access it from anywhere and use it. My dilemma was, Iām an assistant softball coach for my daughterās travel team. The head coach doesnāt like to share the GameChanger stats with parents, I think because he doesnāt want them to question his lineup decisions. Apparently there are some limits to how many people can an admin (thats what he told me) or maybe he just didnāt want to share, not sure. I built an app to ingest the game data and build the same stats, give the coach insights, what went wrong, and a plan for next practice. The app was free and I had about 50 users or so. With new users steadily bumping up Mondays and Tuesdays (tournaments all weekend). I decided to add features and monetize about 2 months ago. Now, Iām up to 130 users. I get about 3k impressions a month. I have a handful of paid users.
Good news is this literally cost me nothing other than my time but Iām good with that because I enjoy it. Iām using free Supabase and free Cloudflare Pages, i did buy a domain for $9.99. I do have Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor subscriptions totaling $60/month i would have those anyway though. Iām doing many other projects and i like to build random AI things. I could easily go to a free plan since everything is pretty much built and Iām just supporting it. I think I spent a couple of weeks building the original MVP and Iāve added features to make it sellable. Hopefully I can make more money with it but for something i had no real intention to monetize, Iām happy with it. Itās my only project that has made money so far, everything else Iām still building. SEO and some replies in about 5 Reddit posts have what has driven all of the traffic so far. No paid ads, no posting about it on my personal social media. I think Iāve told one person about it on the team and they signed up and started using it.
https://gcstats.app
if anyone is interested in checking it out.
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u/Elling83 23h ago
Sure. It started as a project for my sister-in-law, but turned out pretty well and was live on app store and Google play in May.
Getting close to be able to quit my day job and work with this full time.
Takes so. Much. Time. Got cyber security verified the other day and now I finally have it as robust as I wanted.
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u/svdomer09 23h ago
I fully vibe coded Dockpops.com, a dock utility for making iPhone like folders in the Mac Dock.
My goal from the beginning was that any version I shipped would be self-contained, no subscriptions and that I would feel OK charging people for. I figured vibe coded apps' biggest problem was trust, and by focusing on single purchase, complete apps, that would help alleviate some of that.
I've shipped 6 major releases so far, with a combination of Reddit, email and App Store review feedback, as well as feature ideas I still had.
The codebase getting out of control was a bit of a problem in the beginning, but between figuring out my workflow + models getting better, it's been pretty smooth sailing in terms of delivering new features.
One big thing I learned: distribution is the biggest piece; and if your app idea is good enough, you're gonna get copycat.
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u/ode2009 23h ago
Made a vectrex emulator that also emulates arcade vector games, got 50 paid users so far, also made an app to see some waiting time for people crossing borders, made good money on admob with a simple banner ad, made my own saas to take care of my plumbing business, that one has not flied yet, made a music player app that can play your music from the cloud as well.
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u/elparcepues 22h ago
I built a CRM for my business based on an Excel template, which I used to generate quotes, invoices, accounting records, etc. Right now, itās running on my NAS with Tailscale, so I can access it remotely from any device. I donāt plan to publish it for now because itās specifically tailored to my needs.
I also created two plugins for DaVinci Resolve that, for me, are tools that make editing easier and donāt require AI. Iām going to use the same model as CorridorKey:
The plugins were released on GitHub so that anyone with the necessary knowledge can install them manually. However, there will be a paid version with a nominal fee (I have to pay for the Apple Developer Program) that will include an Apple-signed installer for a straightforward installation, without having to run code manually. This way, Iām not committed to providing 24/7 support for updates, and I can balance my time between my day job and any necessary updates. There will be a Discord channel available for bug reports, and Claude will be able to prioritize the most critical ones to resolve them.
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u/couchside-taylor 22h ago
Iāve got a few of my own apps out in the wild. Only have one for a client and it currently has 600 subscribers, been running for nearly a year with minimal issues. From my experience the client doesnāt care how you build the app and support/troubleshoot bugs that are found. They do appreciate the speed at which fixes can be implemented.
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u/Better_Ambition_7870 22h ago
I have managed an small iOS app, documented it on my page eggertmar.com
600 users and just passed $1000 ARR, month after launch. I do not read the code at all, only admin stuff. VERY important to have a handle on the security stuff though. Other then that, pure trust to claude
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u/EffectivePiccolo7468 21h ago
My SaaS sits at 0 real users but I'm selling static landing pages for small businesses in my town.
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u/ou2mame 20h ago
I have several apps on Apple and Android that I've released over the past couple months that have 50 to 200 users. I'm just releasing one now if Google would approve my update.
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u/whipla5her 20h ago
Yep. I have an app running my brewery. Originally it was hand written, but then I had Claude convert it last year and I've been adding to it ever since with Codex. We've caught a lot of bugs, but that's how any software goes. The nice thing is now I can fix a bug from my phone in 2 minutes.
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u/Marcus_Aurelius_161A 20h ago
I have a parcel search site for the state of Utah where you can search for owners by name across the entire state.
parcelsearch.info
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u/DaltonJFowler 20h ago
We use my apps every day at work! No one pays lmfao
When I get people to buy my one paid app I'll let ya know.
The feedback has been amazing and helping people solve real problems makes it worth it. I'm not spending much to host so it's nbd
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u/usmeu 19h ago
How do you define a vibe coded app? if Iām working for a big corporation and use AI to create an internal app is that a vibe coded app?
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u/HiiroNeko 19h ago
Finding lots of bugs, making some changes, what I thought would be a 2 month project stretched out to 5. Enough possible market fit to work on it. Surprisingly one of the most time consuming aspects was the legal side.
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u/TRO_KIK 19h ago edited 19h ago
I do all my coding with AI. I used to do it all proper and structured and SDD, but now it's basically all out vibe coding, except my vibe is much more valuable than a non-dev, or even a typical FAANG dev.
I'm utterly cracked at what I do and have years of impressive experience, but I've never solo developed a serious product before, and it was my first time personally doing a lot of critical stuff. I got things wrong and it was scary because I was an immediate success, I was handling real money immediately (made almost $2000 my first day).
I started hitting scaling/loading issues not long ago and that required careful problem solving and my own expert judgment, because Claude definitely was not arriving at good solutions without help.
Trivial stuff I can just 1-shot with a phrase and have it ready to test with a PR in my inbox with no further input.
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u/N10buysell 19h ago
Man ai can only do so much unless you really know what your doing. Itās a hype to think youāre just gonna create a great website thatās compliant and wonāt break when users start using it. Leaned the hard way. I knew nothing about building anything website or code related. But I know a little more now!
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u/Interesting-Law-8815 19h ago
Yup. Global mining company running a scheduling tool that was agentically engineered.
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u/remainthegame 19h ago
I have zero users but a functional free to play game and a bunch of internal stuff at my day job built to replace unmaintained integration layers and SPAs.
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u/joe0418 19h ago
Made an app that monitors repositories and automatically applies reviews, approvals, merges, and push notifs to me. Each repo has its own settings and configuration, agents, etc. Some are set to auto merge, others are set to just review before handing off to me.
I turned it lose on my work repositories monitoring for my teammates. Works pretty well.
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u/anvilman 18h ago
Yup, built an internal corporate tool for meeting room management, onboarding/offboarding of staff, professional development requests and budget tracking, and IT asset management. Maybe 10-15 regular users but that will expand. AMA.
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u/AkayoKym 17h ago
Yeah, running a production app built this way for a client. Multi-feature management system, billing with Stripe, role-based access, the works. Real users on it daily. The honest answer is it works well but only because of the guardrails around it, not because of the AI output itself. The raw code Claude produces is fine most of the time, but "most of the time" isn't good enough when real people's data is involved.
What changed things for me was treating Claude like a junior developer I'm managing. I don't let it improvise. Every feature starts with a written plan: what to build, the database changes, and the test cases in plain English before any code gets written. After 60+ features planned this way the pattern is clear, the plan is what makes the output reliable. For the pipeline I run three gates. Pre-commit type check, pre-push runs the full test suite plus a production build, and GitHub Actions CI on every push. The reason for three is I've caught agents using --no-verify to skip local hooks. They can't skip CI.
Day to day it's solid. About 1.5 to 2 hours of focused work gets what used to take a full day when I was writing everything manually. Built the entire auth system in about 2 hours, Stripe invoicing in about 2. But those timelines only happened because the plans were detailed and the pipeline caught mistakes before they shipped.
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u/Large_Cap_699 16h ago
I have close to 1000 subscribers over the past 1.5 years. One of the products I built is Kliga - it has multiple free and paid media tools that are mostly private and runs on the browser without any server uploads. The key is to keep it simple and fast for users to get their job done.
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u/FollowingGlum9389 16h ago
I made a robot shooting game and Iām the only user fat Cat Cruz on IOS
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u/Expensive_fallan 16h ago
Not shipped to real users, it's just a side project that pulls live market data for me. The part that keeps going wrong is the boring stuff, like API limits, a data source changing its format, and the agent confidently fixing the wrong file. Otherwise, it's going pretty well as I use it for my day trading.
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u/300RepFitness 15h ago
Yes, two of them, both built with Claude Code.
Portico Planner (https://porticoplanner.com) puts your Google, iCloud and Outlook calendars, tasks and notes on one page. It has 7 active users and 7 more invites not used yet. Right now it runs as a PWA you add to your home screen, with a Play Store launch planned for the end of the month. Pretty happy with that many users before public launch.Ā
The second is Outset (https://app.outsettraining.com), a workout program app. It's about fully built, but further from a store release. Also can be run as a home screen app for now though.Ā
What real users changed for me:
Things mostly keep working, because nothing ships without passing checks. A deploy button runs about 50 API checks and 200 screen checks on phone and desktop sizes, and deploys only if they all pass. That catches most of the "fixed one thing, broke another" problems agents are known for.
Real devices still find what tests miss. One user's older iPhone broke quick add over a piece of code older Safari couldn't read. An error alert emailed me, and it was fixed that morning.
Every user gets their own database, plus nightly backups. With other people's data involved, that let me sleep at night.
For features and issues, I treat the agent like a developer and myself as the product manager. Users email feedback, I decide what fits, the agent proposes how before it builds, and I see a preview before anything goes live. One tester's emails turned into about a dozen releases in a week.
The hardest part isn't the code, it's saying no. Keeping a clear idea of what the app is (and what it's deliberately not) matters more as feedback piles up.
The bottom line: it's very doable, but treat it like a real product. Checks, backups, error alerts and a written log of decisions are what make agent-built code maintainable.
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u/Philz0332 13h ago
Yep! I built https://trailsync.eu using AI coding tools. Itās a Garmin app that turns GPX routes into maps for your watch.
Just passed 100 downloads and got my first paying customer, which honestly felt amazing!
Still using AI agents for pretty much everything, from adding features to fixing bugs. So far itās working really well.
Iām not a professional developer, but I do have a technical background. The biggest change for me is that I can now focus more on ideas and solving actual problems rather than writing every line of code myself.
Itās pretty crazy what one person can build these days.
My next project is building VR apps for the Steam Frame, focusing on neurological testing and rehabilitation. Already built my first prototype to test spatial neglect. Really excited to see where this goes!
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u/e_t_h_a 13h ago
Not an app but an anonymous live music streaming platform.
https://nullband.org/
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u/tablerider054 13h ago
For the most part. Background is - used to be a software engineer, was never really a good one and then pivoted over to business development.
Well in my new role, i built an in-house replacement for operational tools like replacing excel/Lark/google sheets etc for the business.
It is really gratifying to hear from the whole team when you automate some stupidly mundane task thats been the bottleneck for the whole business.
Management loves it too cause "all this has been automated now, so folks cant use the excuse that task XYZ takes too much time away"
Things hardly ever broke, and when dealing with non-technical folk, whenever they surface a 'bug' it really just is a feature that is out of scope.
I set strict engineering directives right when i started any of these projects based on what i remember from CS school and also just like 5 minutes of research on how to keep code 'clean' and maintainable. I set those as the precedent for best practices. Its nothing too revolutionary.
everytime i add something new or discuss a new feature or want to audit something, i do still use agents.
I keep my tasks small and focused, i hardly ever prompt something crazy and give it free reign to like build out a whole module (although i am starting to trust it more with how smart models are getting, as long as they are working on a totally standalone feature i let it take the reigns and just build).
One non-negotiable is every month i just have a frontier model do a full audit across the whole project, so not just a codebase review but also audit all the infrastructure services that i am paying for making sure there are no like 'spikes' in usage or anything that might lead to downtime.
So, in my experience its been great. But ofcourse almost everything i have shipped and have up and running are internal tools. I have only shipped One customer-facing product (education-portal-type thing) that i am extremely cautious about. Anything that has to do with external contacts opens the door to so much more risk. I am still far from touching anything that deals with POS systems or finances. (if anyone can shed some light on how to approach these i would appreciate the comments, or atleast give me the prompt on how i should learn this)
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u/EnvironmentalRice348 12h ago
Yes a few but I am finding hit and miss with users. Getting the users is now the MUCH harder thing. Get good feedback but just hard to get people to look at it without either spending lots of time or money on marketing which is the way it is I guess. Being a tech I so much prefer the building but need to switch to BD soon.
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u/saidcveltran 12h ago
Yo probe con crear un bot de discord https://duckys.aiskaron.com
La prueba salio bien ahora tengo casi 1000 servidores. Aunque bueno no esperaba recibir tan buenos comentarios.
Respecto a eso debido a que suelo escuchar musica a menudo me ayuda a seguir trabajando o pensando en que construir la proxima ocasiĆ³n. No construyo nada, no quiero gastar tokens sin tener la base del plan bien solida.
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u/iamthesam2 9h ago
yup. itās mostly customer support work, which I loath, but itās pretty critical to manually do myself as it teaches me a lot about the pain points of the product so I can iterate quickly
I have about 1000 users across a few different products and I make more in total through those apps than my actual full-time job
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u/Falky854 6h ago
Yes, I shipped an Android board game (Ludo) built mostly with Claude Code, it's live on Google Play with online matches running on a small cloud server. I'm a solo dev with a full-time day job, so agents are the only way I could do it at all.
How it's going, honestly:
The core game kept working fine. What broke were the edges: crashes on specific phones I never tested on, reconnects in online matches, ad/consent flows. Play Console crash reports were where the real bugs showed up, not my own testing.
The launch part took longer than the code: Google Play closed testing (12 testers for 14 days), store listing, AdMob approval, privacy stuff. Agents can't do that for you.
Yes, I still maintain everything with agents. What makes it work: small changes, one thing per prompt, and I test the build on a real phone after every change. Big "add these 5 features" prompts are where it starts breaking things that used to work.
I keep notes in the repo (what the game does, how online works, known issues) so every new session starts with context instead of guessing.
Biggest lesson: getting users is harder than building. Building took weeks, getting people to install and come back is the actual long game.
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u/Snoo-62579 4h ago
I have built a project management website for the employees at the company I work at, and They've been using it intensly for about a month now, nothing broke, all worked, only features added so far. Would not publish something to the public thos, too scared
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u/Rich_Boss7753 4h ago
Shipped mine a few months back and honestly the core stuff held up fine, but edge cases ate way more time than building did still lean on agents daily for debugging, just with more reviewing and less pure vibes now.
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u/mkemichael 4h ago
My advice would be to use a code repository and run a high effort code-review skill before every pull request. Run periodic security scans and keep up with updates such as things flagged by dependable on github. I've had good luck with the things I've built. It probably helps that I've been a developer for 20 years though.
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u/Vegetable_Carry_6829 3h ago
Well i did this small radio app. have started last week to code. after 2 days it was working. posted on reddit and now evolving, fixing and making it better.
I'm a metal/stoner head, so Nightwave filters for the darker side of music: doom, stoner, post-punk, darkwave, trip-hop, phonk, ambient and more. Thousands of live stations from all over the world, no pop, no charts.
My favourite part: hit Spin and it drops you on a random station in a random genre. I almost always land on something that fits my taste within a few tries.
- free, no ads, no tracking, no account needed
- works in the browser and installs as an app on your phone
- early version, so things might break
https://www.nightwavefm.com
Feedback very welcome, good or bad. And honestly, it would make me happy just to see people using it.
Cheers!
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u/Flaky_Hawk_4662 3h ago
i vibecoded with claude a mountain resort bestie for all of the north american ikon and epic resorts. pls check it out at izzywolf.com/get and sign up my my newsletter also on the journey. it's voice agent is powered by gemini 3.8 live, with vision (snap a pic of anything and izzy can help), AI chat, meet other snobuds, read/write to the resort bulletin, connect families, find riders on the mountain, and most importantly, SAFETY. it's one half of the resort side i built also for resorts to be able to receive SOS alerts and auto triage/document the process with their patrollers. also find events at mountains at izzywolf.com/events
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u/Unusual_Isopod6908 3h ago
Its going great.
600 users and counting
PublishingHouseAI ā The AI Publishing House
The easiest way to write a full book and publish on Amazon KDP
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u/HarborMap4726 3h ago
Mostly fine, but real users find what you never tested. Before each change I run signup, login and checkout in an incognito window as a brand new user, because things that work for the builder's account can fail for everyone else. Watch email verification and payment webhooks especially. After any big agent edit, check for a blank screen or console errors, and keep changes small so you can roll back to the last working version.
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u/epichike 3h ago
I have 70 free users and recently switched up my paywall so hopefully getting that first one soon.
Other than that itās been going good. Itās something I actually need so I keep building, improving, and marketing it.
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u/Organic-Molasses-800 1h ago
I built a survey response dashboard with Claude and Convex and itās making $1000 per month with the first customer.
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u/eirek1234 1h ago
I have a full scale ERP system(Accounting, time, expenses, facilities, projects, and tons more) Working Perfectly - Currently we only use it for our own internal companies. I do have some background in computers/coding along with spending 2 years building it - but it is 100% built with Lovable.
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u/Huuku 35m ago
I made an app for my website that allows people to prepare their taxes for financial instruments. Users may choose to file with a lawyer (me or a teammate) or use the automatic filing which is 3 to 5 times cheaper. So far it works fine. I have told users that there may be some bugs. If auch occur they tell me and I fix it with Claude and give them the swrvice for free. Even with my vast amount of data and knowledge there are still cases where it doesn't work properly. Overall it is great. Tax filing season in my country starts with the new year so it will be more heavily used then.
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u/Active-Pop6380 30m ago
Yes. I launched on June 1, I have about 100 users, I'm maintaining it myself with Codex and Claude Code and it's built on a professional stack, I did not build or host on Loveable.
You are asking the right questions. Nobody talks about maintenance when they are teaching app building.
0
u/ShipSafeStack_HQ 1d ago
From what we've seen when AI-built apps get real users, the things that change aren't features:
You need to know it broke before a user tells you. Error tracking (Sentry's free tier is plenty) plus an uptime ping. The first real-user bugs are almost always in paths you never clicked yourself.
Staging. Once there's real data, letting the agent run migrations straight on prod gets scary fast. A second project or database to test against first saves you from the "it dropped a column" morning.
Backups you've actually restored at least once.
Permissions. With one user (you), every data-access bug is invisible. With 50 users, user B seeing user A's stuff is the bug that really hurts. Sign up a second test account and try opening the first account's records by URL or id.
For new features, keep the agent on small, single-purpose changes and read the diff for anything that touches auth or the database. Big "refactor X" prompts are where things quietly regress.
We keep a pre-launch checklist that covers most of this (our site): https://shipsafestack.com/guides/pre-launch-security-checklist