Three Tools-Three Different Results
Our Vibe Coding Journey Using Three Different Tools
Tool 1: Lovable – The First Hit
“I uploaded eight Figma screenshots. Said: I want to build a game day workflow tool. It just… started building.”
Lovable mirrored our UI perfectly. It filled in dummy data. It got the flow right. It even guessed what the buttons should do.
But the moment I asked for changes, things got weird.
“I’d try to update a table, and suddenly the whole page would shift. Stuff I liked disappeared. Elements broke.”
The system was reading my prompt—but not always the way I intended.
Eventually I realized: if I want precision, I need to speak its language. So I learned to name pages the way the code sees them: /ops-trips, not “travel tab.” I stopped writing fuzzy paragraphs and started writing step-by-step instructions.
Things had clicked, until they didn’t.
While the prompts became more specific, I continued to have issues with unexpected changes at each turn of the model. So, I started over. I put together a very precise, detailed prompt that was three pages long. It described every page that I wanted to create in detail and how these pages should interact. I also uploaded our brand guide. The version it produced was pretty good.
We connected this version to Supabase to test out the functionality. It was really cool to see our real information in this tool we had created in an afternoon. It was empowering and energizing. Then we got an alert that our Supabase account was being paused and would need to be upgraded to Pro to retain the data. Oof.
Tool 2: Bolt – Where It Got Real
We were vibe coders, so it was time to join the vibe coding community. At a local meetup in New York, I was introduced to Bolt. Event participants were being given free access to Bolt for the weekend, solving my previous credit issue with Lovable, so I decided to give it a try.
“I joined a vibe coding event, heard about Bolt, opened a new account, and dropped in my long prompt. The output? Beautiful. Functional. Instant.”
Unlike Lovable, Bolt didn’t use Figma inputs. No screenshots. No visual crutches. Just the words. And somehow, it felt right. Clean layout. Sharp branding. All inferred from my prompt.
Then I discovered Bolt’s killer feature: Discuss.
It’s a chat thread that lets you ask questions without changing anything. You get smart, multi-option responses, with pros and cons, and a button that says: implement this one.
“I wanted to add a tab for recruiting. Bolt gave me three options, told me which one it liked best. I hit implement. Done.”
No hallucinations. No broken pages. Just collaborative design, on demand.
We were so happy with the initial results that we decided to use Bolt for projects we had already built in other programs. The results were impressive. Very easy to use and much better design.
Tool 3: Windsurf – Another Move
Eventually, our Bolt project hit size limits.
“It said: Your file is too large. Consider breaking it up and connecting it later. And I thought, I’m not sure I know how to do that.”
So we tried moving the project to Windsurf, an AI-powered Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed to enhance developer productivity and streamline the coding process. I followed a list of instructions - exported to GitHub and cloned the repo. That’s where things got tricky. Node.js installs. blank UIs. Missing config files.
“That was the first time I couldn’t move forward alone. I simply did not have time to figure out how to address all the issues. I tried, but lost interest.”