I vibe-coded a Pebble Time 2 app, and I learned some tough lessons

If you spend enough time on the internet, you’ll be led to believe coding is now easy for everyone thanks to various AI models. Claude, ChatGPT, and others can turn even a novice into a master programmer, and software engineers should seriously consider a second career as pastry chefs. Unsurprisingly, that’s a gross mischaracterization. Large language models do give people without formal training tools they could’ve never imagined before, but it’s not that simple.

So, I decided to find out for myself. I recently wrote about how much I love my Pebble Time 2, and part of the appeal is PebbleOS. It’s open-source, and people can write their own programs to fit their needs. I decided to lean heavily on nostalgia and see if I could recreate the Microsoft MSN Direct service from the mid-2000s. I wanted my Pebble Time 2 to remind me of my Fossil Abacus, so I enlisted AI to help.