vibe coding

wow. what can i say.

a little over a month ago i quit my full time job in order to build and launch Payfrit. i had already built a small AA-related app project using chatgpt, and was in the process of learning claude.

signed up for claude on 12/29/2025. it’s now 1/28/2026. in that month i have done the following:

• built the full Payfrit User app & Payfrit Works app in flutter
• gotten approval from Apple’s app store for both apps, they already have v2 approved
• the android apps are in closed testing, simply waiting on more android testers because i can’t find a way around the 12 tester requirement and i don’t know many android people
• completed a full rewrite of both the apps in native code (swift and kotlin)
• developed an onboarding wizard that allows a new restaurant to be online within about 5 minutes
• built a consumer facing website at payfrit.com that has some great CTAs for both restaurants and large size venues
• entire stack fully self-hosted on 10 dedicated servers across two separate providers, connected via private vpn
• database isolated from the public internet, automated backups every 4 hours
• ssh hardened with key-only auth, fail2ban, and automatic security patching
• self-hosted git, email, team chat, docs suite, and cross-network uptime monitoring
• zero reliance on AWS or any cloud platform, zero per-seat SaaS fees
• 100% open-source, no vendor lock-in. jvm based backend, Forgejo, Nextcloud + Collabora, Mattermost, Mail-in-a-Box, Uptime Kuma, Let’s Encrypt, nginx
• only external services are claude.ai, twilio & ionos, all simple commodities
• every layer is open-source software running on hardware we control

Payfrit has been simmering since roughly feb 2016 or so. at that time, smartphones were not as ubiquitous as they are now, especially with the 65+ age group. it wasn’t common for bluetooth to be active on a user’s phone. times have changed.

then came covid. a pivot to trying to use Payfrit Pads as a wedge, learning some good information to continue building the model. pivoting back to Payfrit as a food & bev/hospitality app wedge about six weeks ago. quitting the pizza job, last day of work was 12/23/2025. been building literally every day since then.

it’s paid off. finally tying up a few loose ends, preparing for a system that can easily manage the explosive growth we are going to experience. fully prepared for it. lfg.

-j