Vibe coding my life: automating the boring stuff with AI

I have a confession: I'm not a "real" programmer. But lately that's mattered less and less, because of what people are calling vibe coding — describing what you want to an AI, iterating in plain language, and ending up with software that actually works.

My little army of automations

Over the past few months I've built — or rather, co-built with AI — a handful of tiny tools: a script that sorts my downloads folder, an agent that drafts replies to routine emails, a dashboard that tracks my fasting windows and cricket league fixtures in one place. Frameworks like OpenClaw make it possible to chain these together into something that feels like a personal operating system.

The lesson under the tech

Here's the thing though — the tech is the least interesting part. The real shift was this: I stopped accepting friction as permanent. Every annoying, repetitive task is now a candidate for deletion. Ten minutes wasted daily is an hour a week. That's 50+ hours a year — back in my pocket, spent with my kids instead.

Start embarrassingly small

If you're curious, don't start with some grand system. Pick the single most annoying 5-minute task in your week and ask an AI to help you kill it. The win isn't the automation — it's realizing you're allowed to redesign your own days.