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Why is it finally ready now after ten years of being a barely functional input-only android app? A few weeks ago I saw @Derek Ross giving a talk and demo of [Shakespear](
Shakespeare - Open Source AI Builder
Build custom apps with AI assistance using Shakespeare, an open-source development environment
), a Chrome app for vibe-coding. Explain the app you want, and the model you select will build it. Don't even need to be a dev they reckon. So I figured I'd give it a try. Start again from scratch, import the old data. In about a week of work this app has progressed far beyond the prototypes that spent more then ten years as half-running shoddy input-only systems that I couldn't be arsed to expand further. It went [pretty well](
Exocortex Blog
Vibe Coding - Exocortex Blog
A review of Shakespeare.diy for vibe coding
) to start with, something even a non-dev could do, then [ceased up](
Exocortex Blog
Fixing The Vibes - Exocortex Blog
Fixing the problems introduced by vibe coding
), unable to really understand the codebase it'd written until I spend a fairly long day manually cleaning up it's mess. So Shakespeare (and presumably all the other tools I haven't tried) seems okay for a non-dev to prototype a small app but currently the models are writing code so sloppy that they can't then later understand it themselves. Still needing a dev's guiding hand to keep it from repeating itself or creating complex unorganized unmanageable code. #vibeCoding #shakespeare
Pre's avatar Pre
The thing about a life-logger, is you input sensitive data about your life, lifestyle and activities, so privacy and data-integrity are some of the most important issues. There can be no server, the data has to be yours and yours alone. Because you can’t tell what is happening to the data in a closed-source app, it must be completely free and open source. You can’t trust a corporate diary, they must sell to anyone offering enough money. So it is with my life log app, all data completely in your own device. No home server ever sees anything. There is no home server. Just the code. To achieve this Exocortex Log is a Progressive Web App. It downloads when you are online at the website and can be installed onto the homepage of your phone. It keeps all data on the local device using indexdb. This means you must be responsible for your own backups. Be sure to export and back up your data regularly. I have gaps in my ten year record where my phone was stolen and most recent backup was months prior. Once installed it will work offline, airplane mode, no internet, down in the tube station at midnight, anywhere. There's a blog on the website saying this and more: https://exocortexlog.com/news/articles/2025-12-06-release/ View quoted note →
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Replies (7)

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↩ replying to Sebastix
Yeah. A lot of the investment and excitement for the AI coding is based on the faith that it'll get better. Some people expect exponentially so even! Though it looks to me more like diminishing returns on exponentially growing investment really. And to assume it can improve without limits is quite a leap of faith. Nice too though. So long as you're managing the code itself and not just the UI seems useful.
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↩ replying to Derek Ross
Paid in sats for your basic model for most of it. Realized I was spending too many sats and switched to the OpenAI account. GPT 4.1 really made a mess of things but 5.1 was certainly much better. 4.1 would just delete entire chunks of functions and replace them with comments saying not to change this part 😄 Ought to be possible to improve the models you'd think, but not without limit. Wonder what those limits will turn out to be.