I'll be honest—I don't officially do web development anymore. But when a nonprofit asked for help, I thought I could knock out a simple WordPress portal in 25 hours using no-code tools like Zapier and Advanced Custom Fields. Boy, was I wrong.
What started as a straightforward project quickly turned into a nightmare of under-scoping and tool limitations I never saw coming. Zapier didn't work with WordPress custom post types the way I expected. Advanced Custom Fields still requires custom coding for Gutenberg blocks after seven years. Google Sheets automation had quirks I'd never encountered. It was starting to look more like 60 hours, not 25.
That's when I reluctantly turned to ChatGPT for help—and it completely saved my butt. Instead of writing custom code from scratch or going back to the client with double the budget, I started "vibe coding." I'd describe the problem, ChatGPT would write the solution, and we'd iterate together. It wrote nearly 2,000 lines of code for me, handled complex features I would've needed premium plugins for, and let me stay flexible when the client requested changes.
The result? A 30-hour project instead of 60, a happy client, and a reminder that sometimes the tools we resist most can be the ones that save us.
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Top Takeaways
- Vibe coding can be a massive force multiplier, even if you're not a developer—ChatGPT walked me through everything and cut my project time in half
- Always scope projects more carefully by testing tool limitations upfront, especially when assuming "obvious" features exist (spoiler: they often don't)
- AI coding made me more flexible and agreeable to client requests because I wasn't emotionally attached to hand-written code
Show Notes
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