Vibe Coding My Way to My Kids Doing Their Chores

If you’re a parent, you likely know the struggle of getting your kids to do their chores. I’ve tried everything with my kids: constant reminders, star charts, and endless negotiations. Honestly, nothing was working for me.

To address this, a couple of months ago I decided to try vibe coding an iOS app to track their chores, let them earn points, and, importantly, offer them rewards for those points. There are a few other free apps for this on the App Store, but I wanted a fun project for myself, and I wanted something that was privacy-conscious: no ads, no tracking, etc.

Anyone who’s done vibe coding these days knows that the AI models are quite capable of building simple applications quickly, but getting the AI to build exactly what you want can be a challenge because it will make assumptions along the way.

When I start a project like this, I begin by using ChatGPT to help me write my prompt that I’ll feed into Codex later. I told ChatGPT that I wanted to develop a product and technical plan for my chores app, outlined the specific features I wanted, and, importantly, told it to ask clarifying questions.

In this process, I just type (or talk, shout out to OpenSuperWhisper) my stream-of-consciousness thoughts into the chat box about what I want to accomplish. What the AI came back with was a thorough plan that I could hand off to Codex or Claude Code to work on.

So, prompt in hand, I should just copy and paste it over to Codex to get started, right? No. There’s a critical step here that people miss. I encourage you to pause and read the prompt that the AI wrote. You’ll likely find inconsistencies with your vision.

When I was building my chore-tracking app, I found that the prompt was overly prescriptive about some ideas I hadn’t told it to implement, and it needed more clarity about testing requirements. I was able to make small but important tweaks to the prompt, which helped keep my vision for the app on track.

After reviewing the prompt ChatGPT created for my chores app and making those fixes, I threw it into Codex. Codex went forward and one-shotted the app in under an hour. It wasn’t perfect on the first try, but I was nearly there. I spent a little over an hour making additional tweaks to the app, and then I was done.

In just two hours, I was able to build a custom app that met my needs. I decided to release the app for free on the iOS App Store, which ironically took significantly longer than building the app itself. Did you know Apple would reject your app just for using the word “kids” in one of the headings of a kids’ chore-tracking app? Now I do.

What I loved most about this project was the fact that I could build something custom for myself in such a short amount of time, it just worked, and it made my life better. The number of battles with my kids over brushing their teeth, putting their shoes on, or just putting away the dishes has gone down significantly. They love seeing how many points they have, and they enjoy redeeming them for actual rewards.

I encourage you to go out and try to vibe code away one of the problems in your life. You may be pleasantly surprised by what’s possible.

If you’d like to check out my app, it’s 100% free on the App Store: Reward Chores. Give it a try and let me know if it helps you!