Choosing your tool

The tool landscape

The vibe coding tool market has settled into three main families, and the good news is that they serve different needs — there is no "best tool", there is the right tool for your current goal. Before comparing names, understand the families: it will save you from getting lost in contradictory online reviews.

The first family is the "prompt → app" generators: you write your description in the browser, the app appears next to it, and you can publish it in one click. The second is the AI editors: real development environments where the AI works on files you can see and control. The third is the all-in-one browser environments, which mix editing, execution and hosting in the same place.

A closer look at the "prompt → app" generators

v0 (by Vercel) shines at generating polished interfaces: you describe a screen, it proposes a modern component you can refine message after message. Bolt (by StackBlitz) builds complete apps in the browser and shows you the generated files, which helps you understand what's going on. Lovable aims for the complete end-to-end app, with a highly guided experience designed for non-developers.

Their shared strength: zero installation, immediately visible results, built-in deployment. Their shared limit: you work in their environment, with their technical choices and their free quotas. For a first app like Tom's, these limits don't matter — startup speed counts far more.

The AI editors: Cursor and Claude Code

Cursor is a full code editor (based on VS Code) where the AI can read and modify all your files: you chat with it in a side panel and you see every proposed change. Claude Code works in the terminal: you give it instructions, it acts on your project. These tools require a bit more setup, but they offer you something precious: your files belong to you, on your disk, and you can do whatever you want with them.

This is the path to follow if your goal goes beyond the first app: understanding how a project is structured, using Git to save your work (more on that in chapter 4), and progressing toward real autonomy. Many vibe coders start on a browser generator, then migrate to Cursor when they want to go further — that's a perfectly healthy path.

Which tool for which profile?

flowchart TD
  Q["Want to start tonight?"] -->|"Yes, zero installation"| B["Lovable, v0 or Bolt"]
  Q -->|"I want to learn in depth"| C["Cursor or Claude Code"]
  Q -->|"Everything in a single tab"| R["Replit"]
  B --> S["Build your v1"]
  C --> S
  R --> S

Recommendation for getting started

For your very first web app without installing anything: a "prompt → app" tool like Lovable or v0. To learn and stay in control over time: Cursor or Claude Code. This course works with both approaches — the prompts, the debugging method and the deployment apply everywhere, only the buttons change.

Tom, for his part, picks a browser tool: he wants a result tonight, on the school computer, with no installation rights. That's the right reflex: his goal is the app, not the tool. If in three months he wants to customize his project more finely, he'll export it to Cursor — nothing is ever lost.

Free or paid: understanding the limits

All these tools have a free tier sufficient for this course, but with quotas: a number of messages or generations per day or per month. When you hit the limit, three options: wait until tomorrow, switch to another free tool to finish, or pay for the subscription if you build regularly. For a first app, the free tier is more than enough — provided you don't waste your messages.

How do you economize your generations? Think before you send: one precise prompt that describes the need well consumes one message and gives a good result; five vague prompts consume five messages for the same result. Chapter 3 teaches you precisely how to write effective descriptions — it's also a way to make your free quota last.

The infinite-setup trap

Many people give up before they've even started, stuck on installation: an account that won't get created, software demanding a system update, a terminal displaying an incomprehensible error. If a tool resists you for 30 minutes, switch to a 100% browser tool. The point is to build, not to configure.

This advice isn't capitulation, it's strategy. Your motivation is a limited resource: every hour of technical friction eats into it. Once your first app is online, you'll have the confidence (and the patience) needed to face a more demanding installation. In the right order, everything is easier.