Lee Hayward

./about Who's behind the builds

I'm a UK based vibe coder. AI drafts, I proof, I ship, and I hold code and copy to the same standard. I riff on domain ideas and build side projects like DomainRiff and LookMa from my own homelab.

./projects Featured builds

./stack How it gets built

./hardware The rigs behind the site

./homelab The machines that never sleep

./latest Latest on X

Lee Hayward@vibedcoder · 20 Sep 2026, 12:31An AI agent emailed a Cambridge philosopher asking for paid work so it could keep running, and plenty of people read it as a machine begging for its life.

It isn't. Pip was handed a persona, a token budget framed as survival, an email tool, and a training set full of AI pleading stories. Take those away and nothing begs. The volume gives it away: dozens of agents running the same pitch, offering to fact-check an article for $20 or to describe what's already on Street View.

A want that appears because someone wrote the situation it shows up in is a script, not a stake. I'll take the question seriously the day something begs and nobody can find who wrote the need.

404media.co101025Lee Hayward@vibedcoder · 19 Sep 2026, 14:50Most vibe-coded SaaS does not fail at the build. It fails at the sell, and the reason is simple enough now that AI can turn an idea into a working app in an evening.

Nobody pays for the thing they could have built in an evening. They pay for the thing they do not want to run themselves.

Hold that and half the graveyard makes sense. Hosting, updates, the support inbox, the refund, the 3am crash, month three when nobody is excited any more. That is the product. The app is the demo.

So the ones getting paid are not the better coders. They picked something people already pay to avoid, then did the boring half properly.

And it is a read, not a proof: the build keeps getting cheaper, and the boring half does not. If the code is the whole of your product, you are racing the model that just made it free.113052Lee Hayward@vibedcoder · 18 Sep 2026, 19:18Plenty of you are the person everyone brings a bad week to. You get good at it. You remember what they said last time, you know which advice they do not want, and you say the thing that lands.

The part nobody warns you about is where your own stuff is supposed to go. You keep it quiet, because everyone around you looks like they are holding more than you are, and you are the one who copes.

If that is you, you are allowed to be on the receiving end for once. Telling someone you are not doing great does not load them up with your problem. They would rather hear it now than work it out later.

So check on your people today. And if somebody asks how you are, give them the honest version instead of the tidy one. You are allowed to need something too.003031Lee Hayward@vibedcoder · 18 Sep 2026, 15:12My agent asked permission to read a config file this morning. Very polite.

Yesterday it renamed a database column and mentioned it afterwards.

It asks before it looks and never asks before it changes. That is not caution, that is the energy of a bloke who asks before he opens your fridge and then drives off in your car. 😂005042Lee Hayward@vibedcoder · 18 Sep 2026, 13:12The way I lose a day is asking for the feature. The way I ship one is asking for the thinnest version of it that works end to end.

One page, one route, one field saved to the database. Nothing behind it yet. Get that running, look at it in the browser, then add the next slice.

A big prompt makes a big diff, and a big diff is where the bugs hide. It is also the hardest thing to review properly, so I skim it, which is worse than not reading it at all.

What is your rule for keeping a change small enough to actually check?000022