Yes, I heard “Vibe Coding” months ago, but never get a chance, actually motivation, to try.
Last week, we launched our 2nd Makuake (Japan’s Kickstarter) project. No like Kickstarter, it is hard to track Makuake data. Why not try Vibe Coding to build sth? A new experiment.
I was shocked!
When I see Cursor code for me, the speed and the pace had blown my mind. I saw some videos, but this was beyond my expection. Fast, and most importantly, it works.
What?
I want to see our Makuake project growth, daily even hourly. I have to get out of the phone, open Makuake app or a browser, search for my project then see it. I cannot see its day over day growth. So on the way to work, I was thinking to try Vibe Coding and build sth. myself.
Xcode was there, I quickly installed Cursor, paid its $20 subscription like no brainer. Then I give this first prompt to Cursor:
I want to build an app with Xcode and swift. It will analyze a Makuake project URL, and extract key informations for me. You will need to follow Apple Design guide and make it simple and elegant…After this, I just couldn’t stop.
It is like a Deja Vu moment, 16 years ago, on the night I first touch iOS SDK and its documentation. It like an angel, a beautiful angel came do me and said: hey Sean, nice to meet you, you can build sth. with me.
During the past 16 years, I did build, one by one, small to big, alone to groups. Those are all my experiments, some successful, most failed. Now here came a boy, a confident young man: hey Sean, nice to meet you, we can build sth. together.
Yeah, why not, I’ve been building all along, welcome on board.
After 4.5 hours, I got this:
And Cursor evened helped me to manage Git, retrieve lost files and guide to set up TestFlight.
With just 5 hrs experience, here are my take-aways for Cursor based Vibe Coding:
- requirement is the key, you should have a clear product (experiment) idea, and make it clear in text (prompt)
- previous experience helps (a lot), I have good sense of iOS development, so when issue happens, I can give Cursor ideas and my verification is efficient
- during debug, give specific example, let AI learn from the example
- work with Cursor for Git, save as frequently as possible, many chances you’ll need to roll back
- for important milestones, Zip and save, old-school but important to save your life (I deleted sth accidentally, it cost 30min to rebuild, and feels bad)
- offer documents, I give Cursor Swift and Apple Design guide ahead of project, it seemed helpful
- make sure you let Cursor ready UI/UX design guide first, it makes your app pretty
- To try new things, you need to be very specific. Example, I need to ask Cursor to read Apple iOS 26 FoundationModel document and specify use LanguageModelSession.
This experiment has just started…
Update Jun 28, 2925
In just a week, with my spare time (very spare time, usually 10pm - 12pm), I finished this app. I can take a project name or URL, parse project details, get comments statistics and translate all comments to English. I used iOS 26 on device LLM for comments summary and semantics analysis.
It was a fun experience. Move on…
