Rebecca Yu developed her dining application in just seven days, motivated by the exhaustion of group chats struggling to choose a restaurant.
Utilizing Claude and ChatGPT, Yu resolved to create a dining app herself, designed to suggest restaurants aligned with her and her friends’ collective preferences.
Yu informed TechCrunch, “With the rise of vibe-coding applications, I learned of individuals without technical expertise successfully developing their own apps.” She added, “A week-long break before classes began seemed like the ideal moment to finally create my own application.”
Consequently, she developed the web application Where2Eat to facilitate dining choices for herself and her friends.
Yu exemplifies a burgeoning movement where individuals, empowered by quick AI advancements, can readily construct applications for personal utility. While many focus on web applications, there’s a rising trend of “vibe coding” mobile apps exclusively for their personal devices. Existing Apple developers sometimes host these personal apps in beta through TestFlight.
This marks a new era of application development, often referred to as micro apps, personal apps, or fleeting apps, due to their design for individual use (or a small, chosen group) and their temporary nature, existing only as long as desired by the creator. These applications are not designed for broad release or commercial purposes.
As an illustration, founder Jordi Amat shared with TechCrunch that he developed a temporary web-based gaming application for his family to enjoy during the holidays, discontinuing it once the vacation concluded.
Furthermore, Shamillah Bankiya, a partner at Dawn Capital, is developing a personal podcast translation web application. Intriguingly, Darrell Etherington, previously a TechCrunch writer and now a vice president at SBS Comms, is also crafting his own personal podcast translation app. He noted, “Many individuals I know are leveraging tools like Claude Code, Replit, Bolt, and Lovable to create apps for particular needs.”
An artist informed TechCrunch that he created a “vice tracker” to monitor his weekend consumption of hookahs and alcoholic beverages.
Even seasoned developers are engaging in vibe coding for personal applications. Software engineer James Waugh shared with TechCrunch that he built a web-based planning tool to support his culinary pursuits.
Web apps and mobile
With tools like Claude Code and Lovable simplifying app development to the point where extensive coding expertise isn’t essential for a working application, we are observing the nascent emergence of micro apps. These applications are highly specialized, cater to specific requirements, and then “vanish once their purpose is fulfilled,” according to Legand L. Burge III, a computer science professor at Howard University.
Burge III elaborated, “It mirrors the transient nature of social media trends, but now, this applies to software itself.”
Yu shared that she has six additional app concepts she intends to develop, remarking, “It’s genuinely thrilling to live in this current era.”
While individuals with limited coding knowledge could always create web apps using no-code platforms such as Bubble and Adalo before the prevalence of LLMs, the novel development is the increasing capacity to build personal, temporary mobile applications. Also noteworthy is the burgeoning understanding that app creation is accessible to anyone by simply articulating their desired application in plain language.
Mobile micro apps remain more complex than web-based versions, primarily because installing an iPhone app typically involves downloading it from the App Store, necessitating a paid Apple Developer account. However, mobile vibe-coding startups such as Anything (which secured $11 million, led by Footwork) and VibeCode (which obtained a $9.4 million seed round from Seven Seven Six last year) are increasingly appearing to assist individuals in developing mobile applications.
Christina Melas-Kyriazi, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, likened this period of app creation to the advent of social media and Shopify, noting, “where suddenly it became incredibly simple to generate content or establish an online store, leading to a surge in small businesses.”
Good enough for one
Despite their benefits, micro apps face challenges. Developing and sharing code can be costly due to necessary subscriptions, particularly when expenses are tied to a single application. For some, app creation also remains laborious. Yu, for instance, mentioned her dining app wasn’t difficult to build, but it required considerable time. She relied on ChatGPT and Claude to grasp certain coding choices, stating, “Once I mastered efficient prompting and problem-solving, development became significantly simpler.”
Furthermore, quality concerns exist. These personal applications might contain bugs or severe security vulnerabilities, making them unsuitable for direct mass distribution.
Nevertheless, the era of personal app development holds considerable promise, particularly as AI and model capabilities in reasoning, quality, and security advance over time.
Waugh, the software engineer, recounted creating an app for a friend experiencing heart palpitations. He developed a logging tool for her to track these episodes, enabling easier communication with her doctor. He remarked to TechCrunch, “This is an excellent illustration of bespoke personal software that aids in monitoring vital information.”
Nick Simpson, another founder, confessed to TechCrunch his struggles with parking tickets, a common issue due to San Francisco’s limited parking. This led him to develop an app that automatically pays tickets after scanning them. His app, currently in beta on TestFlight as he is a registered Apple developer, has garnered interest from many of his friends.
Nonetheless, Burge III maintains that these application types present “thrilling prospects” for both businesses and innovators to craft “highly personalized, context-specific experiences.”
Etherington further suggested that an era is approaching where individuals will cease paying monthly subscriptions for apps, opting instead to develop their own personal-use applications.
Meanwhile, Melas-Kyriazi anticipates that personal, temporary apps will be utilized similarly to how spreadsheets like Google Sheets or Excel were historically employed.
She remarked, “It will effectively bridge the divide between a spreadsheet and a complete product.”
Hollie Krause, a media strategist, developed her own allergy tracking app after being dissatisfied with the options her doctor suggested.
Despite lacking technical expertise, she completed the web app in the brief period her husband was out for dinner. She now reports that they utilize two web applications, both created with Claude: one for managing allergies and sensitivities, and another for household chore tracking.
Krause explained to TechCrunch, “I thought, ‘I dislike Excel, but I’d really like to create an app for our home.'” She added, “So, I quickly developed it, hosted it on Tiiny.host, and put it on our mobile phones.”
She believes vibe coding will foster “significant innovation and solutions for communities otherwise lacking access,” and intends to beta-test her allergy health app with the goal of eventually releasing it to a wider audience.
She stated, “The app aims to assist individuals who find it difficult to manage their daily lives, as well as provide access for caregivers.” She concluded, “I genuinely believe that vibe coding empowers me to help others.”