Percent 1.0

Percent is a tiny app — just a simple way to leave reviews for anything and everything. It’s an open taxonomy. It also tracks how your opinion changes over time.

It was NOT vibe coded. 😈 It was developed by Claude Code running in terminal — mostly Sonnet, with some cross-referencing between Opus and GPT-3 — over the course of three months.

It was ninety days of abject hell.

But I am proud of what we built. It’s quality software, and I really hope you enjoy it!

- iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pe...

- Web: https://www.percent.wtf/

I used over 1 billion tokens. It cost me about $1,120 in total — $900 in AI costs alone, plus Apple Developer Program, hosting, and domain.

Is that a flex? No, it’s an admission of guilt — because despite a decade of product experience, I made virtually every mistake. I fucked up over and over again. The process of bringing this platform into reality was the most aggravating, disappointing, and frustrating work of my career.

And yet, every one of these problems came back to the same root cause. If I had taken more time at the start of each problem — if I had slowed down to plan and articulate my requirements, instead of just giving in to the intoxicating effects of software-on-demand — I could have saved myself a lot of pain.

I’m walking away from this experience with a few insights:
- First, a massive amount of respect for every engineer I've worked with over the years.
- From DevOps to backend to frontend — it’s not just skill. It’s patience. It’s thoughtfulness. It’s discipline. And… it’s magic.

You cannot vibe code your way to great software. You can vibe code your way to software that *looks* like great software, that mimics it. But great software — no matter how you build it — takes time, attention, and intention.

And to anyone who’s ever had that voice in the back of their head saying, “I just want to build this one thing…”— go do it.

Even if it’s not the next Uber-for-X unicorn. Even if no one uses it. Even if it’s just for you.

Because there’s nothing like the joy of finally seeing something you imagined come to life.

I documented my journey here: This is NOT Vibe Coding: An Unfiltered Survival Guide to Building a Production iOS App and Website with GPTs. https://dreynoso.gumroad.com/l/this-is-not-vibe-coding

If you buy the book, you get to read about all my failures — and get a pretty dang good CLAUDE.MD file to test on your next not vibe coding project.