How I Vibe-Coded an AI News Site
One of my favorite websites is the Drudge Report.
It’s been around since the early 1990s with a bare bones design that updates once or twice per day, aggregating news stories from across the web.
I love the Drudge Report model because it gets millions of page views with a simple, straightforward approach.
The AI space changes every day.
It’s hard to keep track of new model releases and developments with different tools. I wanted to stay updated without spending half my day wading through Google News, X, and social media feeds.
So I decided to vibe code an AI news aggregator.
I started with Lovable, a vibe coding tool where you write prompts and AI turns your ideas into code. After about an hour or two of back and forth, Lovable created a barebones design called AI Newshub that surfaced AI content from across the web.
The design looked good, but the content was placeholder material that was out of date. I had something to work with though.
I exported all the code and moved to Cursor, a premium tool developers use for coding and vibe coding. I asked Cursor to analyze the code I generated with Lovable. It figured out exactly what I was trying to do.
Over a couple of days, I iterated my project through prompts and examples. I mostly used Claude 3.5 and Gemini inside Cursor. The key difference with Cursor is you can jump into individual files and edit them yourself, plus set specific rules so AI doesn’t go off on tangents.
Once I had a working prototype, I deployed it to GitHub and hosted it on Netlify. Cursor walked me through this step by step, though it took some trial and error.
The result was The AI Flash Report, my AI news aggregator. Initially, it was pretty bare with no real news stories. I figured out I needed APIs to surface actual content, so I set up connections with Reddit, news publications, and Perplexity.
After connecting the APIs, I improved the design and added features like an AI prompt of the day and news categorization.
The final result is the AI Flash Report - a daily AI news roundup that updates once per day with categorized stories from across the web. Categories include what’s trending, latest AI products, creator economy, generative AI, business, research, companies, ethics and policy, plus my prompt of the day.
Now, instead of wading through social media feeds and mainstream media, I check the AI Flash Report once daily to see what’s happening. This gives me ideas for my newsletter and AI-related products.
The entire project took about 25 hours of development. I kept things simple with a barebones design, avoiding images and excess content beyond links.
If you need help mastering the art of promptwriting, check this out. Inside, I cover some of the methods I use for the AI Flash Report!