Should I vibe code
Flexible docs, databases, wikis, and lightweight project workspace
You will build twenty percent of Notion in a weekend and the other eighty for the rest of your life.
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Their verdict, the Plus price and the build-time estimate come from their entry, MIT-licensed. Checked 2026-08-03.
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Our verdict, the regret score and everything below it. Editorial and unsponsored — nobody can pay to be moved.
The honest answer
why the verdict is what it is
Markdown pages with wiki links and a simple table view is a lovely small app. The block editor, permissions and sync that make Notion Notion are years of work you would be starting from zero.
What actually breaks
not "if". the specific failures.
- The editor, in a hundred small ways you will discover one at a time
- Sync, if you add it, taking notes with it
- Your enthusiasm, somewhere around implementing tables
The pages and links work and you are pleased, so you start on tables. Two weeks later you are implementing column types, then sorting per view, then a filter expression, then what happens when a linked row is deleted — and you notice you have written a small database engine with a text editor attached. The notes you built this to keep are still in the folder you started with. Nothing broke; the project simply became a different, much larger one somewhere around the third column type.
Is that you?
the verdict is a default, not a law
- It is Markdown files on disk with a nice viewer
- It is single-user
- You have scoped it to the one feature you actually use
- A team would depend on it
- You are planning to build a block editor
- You need real-time collaboration
If you build it anyway
the checklist, then the prompt that enforces it
- Store content as Markdown on disk. Every note app dies eventually and plain files survive the funeral.
- Pick one feature — wiki links, or tables, or databases. Not all three.
- Build export before you build anything else.
- Do not build a block editor. A textarea with a preview pane gets you most of the way at a fraction of the cost.
I want a personal notes app instead of Notion. Keep me honest: 1. Content is Markdown files in a plain directory. The database, if any, is only an index that can be rebuilt from those files at any time. 2. Do not build a block editor. A textarea with a live preview pane is the scope. If I ask for blocks, remind me that this is the specific decision that turns a weekend into a year. 3. Build export first: a command that copies every note to a folder of .md files. It should be trivial because of rule 1 — that is the point. 4. Pick exactly one structural feature and implement it well. Ask me which: wiki-links with backlinks, OR typed tables, OR tags. Not several. 5. Full-text search via SQLite FTS5 over the index. 6. Single user, local only, bound to localhost. No auth, no sharing, no real-time collaboration — and say in the README that those are the reasons Notion costs money. 7. Never move or rewrite my files without asking. The directory is mine. 8. Write the README section 'what this deliberately does not do' before writing any code, and hold me to it.
That one keeps you out of trouble. For the prompt that actually builds it, canivibecodeit.com has one.
their build prompt ↗Or don’t build it
the boring option, and the way back out
The moment anyone else needs to read or edit. Collaboration, permissions and sync are the product, and they are the three things a solo build will not get right.
$12/mo is cheaper than your weekend.
If the notes are Markdown in a folder, there is no exit to plan — the data was never trapped. That single decision is the difference between a fun project and a migration you will resent.
Open-source Notion-like workspace with databases and docs.
Questions
How far can I actually get?
Surprisingly far in a weekend: pages, links, search and a decent editor. The gap opens later, in the hundred small editor behaviours you never consciously noticed until yours does not have them.
Every week, someone ships something they shouldn’t have.
New verdicts, the worst thing that landed in the trap, and the occasional incident report. No other email, ever.
Sync is the hardest problem you will ever underestimate, and the loser is your notes.
Block references are the fun part. Block references at 50,000 blocks are the part that ends projects.
Beautiful documents are a typography problem, and typography does not respond to prompting.
last reviewed 2026-08-03 · verdict is editorial and unsponsored · shared entry data from canivibecodeit under MIT · not legal advice