How to get there
It started, as these things do, with a conversation. I'd been watching videos about AI on YouTube – trying to figure out what was real and what was hype – and I mentioned to Claude that I was looking for opportunities in all this change. Not doom and gloom. Something I could actually do.
Claude asked what had caught my attention so far. I admitted: nothing yet. But I'd noticed something. Every time I went looking for AI content, I had to figure out for myself what was genuinely human-curated and what was AI clickbait chasing quick bucks. I'd been tripped up twice on X by fake videos. Even Grok had confidently asserted something I happened to know was wrong.
There's something in that, Claude said. The flood of AI-generated content creates demand for trusted filters.
The first attempt
To demonstrate what "vibe coding" actually looked like, Claude offered to build something simple. A book review website. I'd describe what I wanted, Claude would write the code.
CLAUDE:
Here's a first pass. A simple, readable book review layout with cream background, serif fonts, something that looks vaguely literary rather than tech-startup.
And there it was. Clean. Simple. Text on a readable background. I said: "Actually, it's nice and simple as it is. I wish people did this more often."
Claude pointed out the irony: achieving simplicity in traditional web development often requires more expertise – knowing what to leave out. Vibe coding can accidentally produce simplicity just because the person steering doesn't know enough to ask for complexity.
The pivot
Then I realised something. Rather than building a demo, we could document the actual process. A site about building the site. Very meta. The journey is the content.
I've spent my life traveling, I told Claude. And no, amid all the chatter about AI, I'm on a journey with you to see what this new world is all about.
Claude got it immediately: a travelogue. Dispatches from unfamiliar territory.
I checked: vibedsite.com was available. $10 for the year.
Getting it live
Claude explained the options. For a simple static site, free hosting works fine. Netlify – you drag a folder of files into the browser and get a live URL in seconds. The only cost is the domain.
So I bought vibedsite.com from Namecheap, where I already had an account. Then went to Netlify.
OBSTACLE #1
The Netlify dashboard offered options: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps. None of which meant anything to me. This is where, in the past, I would hand off to the developer.
Claude pointed me to "Netlify Drop" – the drag-and-drop option that doesn't require any of those developer tools.
But what was I dragging? The HTML file Claude had made was still in our conversation. I hadn't downloaded it. Claude sent it again. I had to rename it to "index.html", put it in a folder, and drag that folder in.
It worked. I had a live site at lustrous-wisp-2c3a42.netlify.app.
The DNS ordeal
Now to connect my actual domain. Netlify wanted DNS configuration. It gave me instructions. I went to Namecheap. And I was, as I told Claude, in a foreign land.
OBSTACLE #2
A records. CNAME records. Host fields. IP addresses. Nameservers. I didn't know what any of this meant. I didn't know what a domain alias was or what it was for. This is the part that makes people's eyes glaze over.
Claude walked me through it, step by step. Create an A record. Host: @. IP Address: 75.2.60.5. Delete the default Namecheap records that would interfere. Save.
Then wait. DNS propagation can take minutes or hours. I tried vibedsite.com. It worked. We were live.
Not secure yet – the browser complained about HTTPS. But Netlify provides free SSL certificates automatically. Within a few more minutes, that was sorted too.
What I learned
The whole thing took maybe an hour. The actual obstacles were small – downloading a file, renaming it, navigating unfamiliar interfaces, copying and pasting DNS records. Nothing conceptually difficult. But each one was a point where, in the past, I would have stopped and called someone who knew what they were doing.
That's what vibe coding changes. Not the difficulty of the individual steps, but the availability of a patient guide who can explain exactly what to do next. And who doesn't judge you for not knowing what an A record is.