alt Hacker NewsShow HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app
Over the last 2-3 weeks, I vibecoded the recipe app that I always wished existed - recipeninja.ai . It now includes a fully interactive voice assistant so you don't need to get your dirty hands over your new iPad when you're cooking.
Background: I’m a startup founder turned investor. I taught myself (bad) PHP in 2000, and picked up Ruby on Rails in 2011. I’d guess 2015 was the last time I wrote a line of Ruby professionally. Last month, I decided to use Windsurf to build a Rails 8 API backend and React front-end app, using OpenAI's realtime API for voice-to-voice responses. Over the last few days, I also used Claude Code and Gemini 2.5 Pro for some of the trickier features. 35,000 LoC later, this is what I built!
The site uses function-calling to navigate the site in realtime as you chat with the voice assistant, which I think is pretty neat.
For the long version, see https://tomblomfield.com/post/778601470234918912/vibecoding-...
I'd love any feedback you have!
Demo video of the voice assistant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRhVc9D5kcg
Generate and edit new recipes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwwZF6dHcHg
Comments
Ai slop for generating more ai slop!
Missed an opportunity to call it "Vibe Cooking"
Wow, I can't believe how many people seem to be missing the point here and being overly negative. The fact that you can have an ai assistant code something like this by giving it instructions would be utterly miraculous 10 years ago, even less.
Whatever the ultimate usefulness of the website is, the point is using it is slick. It works and it works well.
Very nice demo of vibe coding Tom. I appreciate it.
I am horrified that you've produced that much code in such a short amount of time.
Obviously your fish recipes are the best, well done sir :) Apparently most people aren't aware of the date...
Every recipe is cum bro
Thanks for sharaing your journey, I have few observations
1. When I click on a recipe from home page it is maintaining the scroll position, so I am not seeing the top of the screen. Is this deliberate?
2. "Recipe Ninja was vibecoded by Tom in San Francisco." Will it increase of decrease trust in your system for users?
3. To remove AI changing random files, I use "Copy relative path" to tell AI which file to change (there is a keyboard shortcut too). Not fully vibe coding but can be useful for precision bug fixing.
Good luck with the project.
"Still, I was determined not to write any code ... I just sat laughing as the computer wrote code."
I can pop over to Midjourney and be determined not to draw a single line and "sit there laughing" as it draws the Mona Lisa in the style of Salvador Dali but with a turnip instead of a person.
How is this any different? What is ultimately notable about it? Did any of it make you a better programmer?
I'm always deeply impressed when people devote significant chunks of their time to achieving extraordinary results. I'm entirely baffled, however, that there's anything at all interesting about using an AI interface to build an AI interface to connect you to AI slop.
You could have spent 20 hours planting trees or doing some kind of community serivce, and the world would have been a far better place.
April fools day has messed with my ability to identify satire at this time of year. Let's look at the evidence:
Posting date: 2025-04-02T01:57:13 1743559033 <-- too late
LoC: 35,000 <-- That's a _lot_
Front page: "Elon Musk Dirty Pants", "Heroin Hashbrowns", "AI Slop Stew", "Sweet Tooth Delight Made with Human Teeth" <-- WTF?
This is a joke, right?
took forever to open.
I mean I guess kudos to you for being creative and building something, even if its with the so-called vibe-coding. But LoC is not the metric I would use to describe any app I've built, or that I am building.
People are putting disgusting nonsense in there. Maybe add an AI review step to block that stuff. Let them do the whole recipe, then just block it.
How does one learn to vibe code
Is this satire making fun of 'AI'? I cannot tell. But it looks and feels like satire.
the microphone symbol should be animated while listening.
This is great. Want to come demo it in the weekly EarthPilot.ai AI Playground tomorrow at 11est?
Http://earthpilot.com/play and then join at AnthonyDavidAdams.com/zoom at 11 for show and tell.
I’m making a non-fiction book writing agent and I’d love to better understand how you used function calling to navigate the website!
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Amazing! Truly the frontier of technology. Now imagine if every recipe was an NFT, stored in the blockchain!!
A cooking web app 35k LoC? Wow, the author might be surprised to know that an entire OS kernel can be programmed at a fraction of that count. I can safely say that the days where we compained about JS bloat can be put aside, this is a whole new league by itself.
Sane advice: learn to program, put the AI hype/drug aside and do yourself a favor. It's an invaluable lifetime skill knowing to program from scratch and perhaps unassisted coding will be a looked-after skill in the years to come.
please stop saying vibecoding it makes me wanna kms
That is nice actually. Recipe sites are so annoying where I have to scroll for an hour to see the ingredients. Thanks!
Ok, I think this is actually the best recipe app I've used. Well done!
Stop ruining the commons please, it is a horrible ethical crime to flood the internet with AI-generated garbage.
Thank you for that ice water recipe, really wouldn't have known how to do that: https://www.recipeninja.ai/recipe/r_8Pq0RPfvVGf2Xw/ice-water...