Weekend Vibe Coding - Probability, Pedestrians and Starlings
Greetings from a sunny Sunday in London. This weekend I found myself watching my kids swim, phone in hand — not scrolling mindlessly, but coding a new project on my phone. Later that day, while sipping a coffee in Greenwich, I was back at it, tinkering with an idea between leisurely strolls. I’ve started calling this casual ritual “weekend vibe coding.”
What is vibe coding? It’s essentially coding by feel and curiosity rather than formal expertise or rigid plans. (The term was even coined by AI guru Andrej Karpathy to describe building applications by just describing them to an AI agent, without needing to fully understand the code.) In practice, it means I chat with an AI, tell it what I imagine, and watch as it materializes an interactive app or simulation. It feels less like engineering and more like riffing with a super-helpful creative partner. No big upfront design docs, no complex setup — just an idea, a few prompts, and see what happens. You don’t need to “know how to code” to begin. In fact, I hadn’t written a line of code since high school AP Computer Science in C++, but that didn’t stop me from diving in. Weekend vibe coding is all about wonder and play — chasing a “what if?” notion down a rabbit hole purely because it delights you.
Three Recent Projects Born from Vibe Coding
So, what kind of weird and wonderful things can you make with a weekend of vibe coding? Let me share a few playful experiments I’ve cobbled together in recent weeks, largely by describing my vision to Manus and then tweaking:
Probability Playground – I’m researching probability for a big magazine story I’m working on and I realized I didn’t actually know anything about it, despite covering quants on Wall Street and generally being fascinated by prediction. So I asked Manus, which alongside ChatGPT is my go-to AI, to create an interactive probability lesson that tells me the history of probability in short chapters but also visualizes chance in action. This started with me recalling how unintuitive probability can be for many people. It took as few tweaks but I got there in the end. (One tip based on my experience. Sometimes an AI can do a great first version of what you want, but fixing it or updating it can quickly spiral out of control. It’s actually less costly and time intensive to tell it to start from scratch rather than fix something that isn’t working.)
Probability Playground – Interactive probability lesson project –
https://probability.manus.space
Probability Project (Build Replay) – Manus replay of the probability demo’s creation – https://manus.im/share/5i5oKW8s3cK7cVMzW2yE1g?replay=1
Sidewalk Dance (Pedestrian Game Theory Simulator) – This one was inspired by something funny. You know that little dance when two pedestrians approach each other and silently negotiate who moves left or right? Every time it happens to me, I think one day I’m going to learn the actual math of how this happens. So a few weekends ago, I asked Manus to research the subject and create a visualization of the problem and also to solve it for all time. (Another tip: AI can do things you can’t even think of, so let it be your partner in imagining. Ask it questions like what do you think? What else could we do?)
Sidewalk Dance – Pedestrian game theory simulator –
https://sidewalkdance.manus.space/?locale=en
Starling Flock Simulator (with Predator!) – I’ve always been mesmerized by starling murmurations – those swirling, pulsating flocks of birds that paint the sky at dusk. Using vibe coding, I set out to recreate that phenomenon based on deep research into the mathematics. The simulator shows a flock of starlings flitting about in beautiful cohesion. Then I added a twist: a hawk that dives into the flock. Suddenly the swarm splits and wheels in responsive patterns, just like in nature. It’s an interactive visualization of emergent behavior. This one is one of my favorites. I could really watch it for hours. It took a lot of work though — I started from scratch many times and probably spent $100 in credits …
Starling Murmuration Simulator – Flocking simulation with predator dynamics –
https://murmuration.manus.space/
None of these projects is polished enough to change the world, but that’s not the point. The point is I had an idea on Saturday and by Sunday I could play with it in real life. Each of these began with a spark of curiosity (“Can I teach probability through play?” or “What if I model two strangers crossing paths?”) and a willingness to see where the vibes took me. Using Manus made it ridiculously easy to get from idea to interactive demo in a weekend. In another era, I might have just jotted the ideas down and never pursued them. Now I can actually bring them to life, no coding PhD required.
At Brazen Labs, we are working on much more ambitious projects and technology. I’m also working on more focused projects around media and journalism, which I’ll share in a future edition!
Frustration, Learning, and the Joy of the Process
Interestingly, this journey back into coding (if you can even call it that) has started to rebuild my technical skills in spite of myself. Remember, I hadn’t coded in anger since my teenage years. At first, I leaned entirely on the AI to do the heavy lifting. But as I iterated on these projects, I’d hit little roadblocks or quirks that piqued my curiosity. Why are my starling birds clumping together? How do I add a scoring mechanism to the sidewalk game? When the AI’s output wasn’t what I envisioned, I found myself reading the code to diagnose the problem. Ironically, the solution to many problems was to use more powerful AI. So when Manus (which uses Claude’s Sonnet 3.7 primarily) wasn’t working, I’d ask ChatGPT o3 or now o3-pro, or Claude’s new Opus 4 (also sometimes Gemini 2.5). Those are smarter and better at code, but hard to use for vibe coding in the way that Manus simply does it and launches a website.
An Invitation to Try “Vibe Coding”
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from my weekend vibe coding adventures is this: anyone can do this. You don’t need to be a software engineer. If you have even a spark of an idea or just an inkling that it would be fun to make a little interactive doodad, I encourage you to give it a go. Instead of spending your next lazy Sunday purely consuming content — binge-watching another series or scrolling the endless news feed — try creating something weird or delightful. It could be as small as a digital dice roller or as ambitious as a tiny game. Embrace the fact that you have no clue what you’re doing. That’s the point! With AI assistants like Manus, you can literally tell the computer what you dream up and see it start to happen. Follow your curiosity, and don’t worry if the result is messy or silly.
In the end, vibe coding is about recapturing a sense of wonder in making stuff. It’s a reminder that technology isn’t just a thing to consume passively — it can be a playground for your ideas. The next time you find yourself with a free hour on the weekend, maybe try opening a blank project. Allow yourself to tumble down the rabbit hole of creation. You might be surprised at how energizing it is to build rather than just browse. Happy vibe coding!
Let me know what you’re building or if you aren’t ready to dive in, let me know what you want to build and maybe I’ll try to build it for you!