It took about two days, but using Claude, I’ve built a better version (at least for me) of Monday.com. I use Monday as the data hub of my YouTube channel. I’m blown away by how good this is. No more Monday subscription fees. I’ve also built a better version of Trello (at least for me) to track video production and sponsor connections. Again, I can’t believe how well this works. I get to roll my own on anything I need. I’m not a programmer in any way. Claude lead me through the entire process from start to finish.
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Yes. Not all software is going to disappear but those apps that have survived over the years via incremental updates whose functionality can matched my AI will be the first to go. A lot of SAAS will be withering on the vine.
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That’s great. Lowered switching costs is one of the biggest benefits of these tools.
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I see this opinion a lot, but there’s a lot of work which goes into creating and hosting a SaaS application, especially those which are focused on organisations rather than single user. Secure hosting, compatibility, and Vulnerability management take a lot of work and a significant amount od tooling to do it comprehensively.
A lot of organisations moved to SaaS to reduce their overheads from running things on-premise. rolling their own solutions will move a lot of those costs back into their organisations, or leave them vulnerable when things stop working.
I can see that some people will want to code their own Single user apps, but are they willing to maintain them going forward through OS updates and Vulnerabilities?
SaaS has a lot of juice in the tank
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There will no doubt be in a shift in what types of software people will pay for - but no doubt there will remain a strong need for commercial software.
Monday.com is a great example. It is a fundamental tool for employee collaboration on document workflows for my medical practice and related consulting work. I need a HIPAA compliant solution for sharing large documents with multiple employees; that is exactly what Monday.com does and I have an enterprise plan for a small number of employees to do this.
Interestingly Monday.com has very strong ability to integrate custom apps. I recently Vibe coded a reporting app which stunningly increases what Monday.com can do in my particular situation. But there is no way I can or would vibe code a Monday.com replacement with all the audit trails and security features it has, nor do I suspect you included those security features in your app (nor do you probably need them).
So Monday.com may have lost one customer but they also forever cemented a relationship with another. Lots of shifts like this will happen in the industry. As for you - you no longer pay Monday.com but you do pay Anthropic to use Claude.
That’s all good - and evidence of a vibrant free market in software at work. It’s not dead at all.
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It would be quite interesting if this became the top Google search result for “Monday.com alternative “
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As a former programmer and product manager, I feel the current euphoria about AI completely replacing traditional software development is a bit exaggerated.
Professional/commercial software has a lot of “under the covers” work for security, reliability, and scaling. I’m not saying AI can’t do that eventually, but right now we are in what I call the “Wow, I can write my own Excel macro and don’t need IT any more for my dashboards” phase of early excitement.
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I see it as more that (IMO) a paid Monday account was always the wrong tool for a single person to manage their YouTube channel, and this has given him the headspace to switch to something simpler without having to research other solutions.
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Edge-cases. Edge-cases. Edge-cases. Edge-cases. Edge-cases. Edge-cases. Edge-cases. Edge-cases. Edge-cases. Edge-cases.
We pay for professional software because it handles them.
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now THIS, I can see as a great use of Vibe coding using something like native APIs or joiner class services like Zapier to get access to the information.
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AI is a useful tool to enable people to build things for themselves. It’s great until it doesn’t work. Monday and other SAAS will stay in business for a good while because of collaboration, reliability, and more. Enterprise systems rely on auditing and permissioning that vibe coding may not integrate appropriately
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Yeah. I have a ton of “software” on my computer that I’ve written to do random things. Lots of PHP and shell scripts. It works great for me. In much the same way, I have a couple of bent paper clips in my toolbox that help me disassemble a couple of my favorite pens.
None of these things are professional, robust tools. I wouldn’t be handing them off to most other people. But they’re fine for my needs.
Vibe-coded software is going to be the same sort of thing for many people. It will help people that have small, niche needs get software to address them. And it will probably cause a number of people to discontinue single-account versions of things like Monday.com.
But in the grand corporate game, I can’t imagine that SaaS products are going anywhere anytime soon.
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Agreed - Monday.com has a very advanced GraphQL API. It was purpose-built for integrating custom apps, and Monday.com has other features on its platform to build custom apps.
They also have a marketplace to monetize custom apps with very favorable terms - Developer keeps 100% of first $200,000 and then 85% thereafter.Z
I tried writing my own custom app previously but learning to use the GraphQL API is quite complex. I even tried hiring freelance programmers and it was challenging. AI mastered both the GraphQL API and the nuances of Monday.com security issues easily.
In my case vibe coding was able to figure it out way easier than even professional programmers who had tried.
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From what I’ve seen using AI coding assistants, generating functions and classes and simple interactions between them is pretty effective.
But the coding assistants still fail miserably with intricate software architecture.
These systems make progress every week, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is no longer a problem in a year.
It would be neat if macOS and iOS would allow vibe coding of workflows/shortcuts that could replace having to create them by hand. Imagine being able to do everything possible in Keyboard Maestro and BTT and Shortcuts and Hazel just by asking Siri to set it up.
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Ive been asking Gemini Ai with some help. It’s s been helping me with small tasks in Karabiner Elements
Claude is very close to that at present - have you tried?
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Unfortunately, the software developed by AI has many serious security vulnerabilities. It’s a veritable paradise for criminals.
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Sadly, it’s not just the software developed by AI.
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I wonder how RichB knows that his vibed apps can’t be hacked, or can’t be very easily hacked? Does Claude have a way of doing a security check on the completed app?
True, but usually you are looking at a limited number of vulnerabilities, hopefully being searched for and addressed by the developers. I’m thinking that custom vibe apps could have many unknown vulnerabilities. If Claude can’t find and fix these, it might be a good business opportunity for a commercial entity - “Let us check the security of your vibe apps.” But it might be just as well to let them make the app in the first place.
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