The Vibe Coding Stack I Use Every Day

TL;DR

• My vibe coding stack lets me ship production-ready apps without a full dev team.
• The stack covers five layers: editor, AI agent, hosting, database, and design.
• Claude Code is the AI agent I use most. It does the heavy lifting.
• I pair it with Cursor for in-editor completions and Supabase for the backend.
• This is the same stack I use across Devwiz and my Njin Method clients.

I get asked about my vibe coding stack at least twice a week.

So here it is. No fluff. Just the tools I actually open every single day to build and ship software.

If you want to understand what vibe coding is first, read what is vibe coding. This post is about the specific tools.

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What does a vibe coding stack actually need?

A vibe coding stack has one job: let you move from idea to working product fast, with AI doing the grunt work.

That means you need:

1. An editor that gets out of your way.
2. An AI agent that actually writes useful code.
3. A hosting layer that deploys in seconds.
4. A database that does not need a database admin.
5. A design system so you are not building from scratch.

Here is what I use for each.

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Layer 1: editor

Cursor is my day-to-day editor. It is VS Code under the hood, so nothing changes about your setup. But it has inline AI completions that are genuinely good.

The tab-to-complete feature is fast. When I am writing boilerplate or wiring up components, Cursor fills in what I would type anyway. I barely notice it after a while. It just works.

I also use the Composer feature for bigger changes. You describe what you want, it diffs the changes, you accept or reject. Clean workflow. You could use plain VS Code, but Cursor's AI completions are tighter and it knows more about your codebase.

Cursor is the editor I reach for when I want to write code fast without thinking about the tooling.

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Layer 2: AI agent

Claude Code is the biggest part of my stack. It is what I use to build entire features, debug problems, and run complex work.

It runs in the terminal. You give it a task, it reads your codebase, it makes changes, it checks its own work. It is not just a code generator. It is closer to a junior developer who never gets tired.

I use Claude Code at Devwiz to run agents that do research, write copy, build apps, and maintain systems. The vibe coding stack would not work without it.

The thing that sets Claude Code apart is how it handles context. It can read your whole project. It understands how things connect. That is what makes it useful for real work, not just toy projects. If you want to go deep on it, I wrote a full guide: the Claude Code complete guide.

I have used ChatGPT and Copilot too. ChatGPT is great for ideation. Copilot is decent for autocomplete. But neither runs autonomously and makes changes across multiple files the way Claude Code does. For vibe coding, you want an agent, not a chatbot.

The AI agent is the engine. Everything else in the stack is the car.

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Layer 3: hosting

Vercel is where every front-end project I build goes. I push to GitHub, it deploys automatically. That is it.

The preview deployments are genuinely useful. Every pull request gets its own live URL. I can share it with a client or a Njin Method team member without spinning anything up. Edge functions are fast. The free tier is generous.

For anything that needs more control, like internal tools or client-specific apps, I use a self-hosted setup with Coolify. It gives you a one-click deploy experience on your own server, and it takes about 20 minutes to set up.

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Layer 4: database

Supabase is my default database for almost everything. It is Postgres under the hood, which means it is real SQL. No weird query language to learn.

The reason it fits the vibe coding stack is the auto-generated API. You create a table, you get an API endpoint. You do not need to write a backend for basic operations.

The auth system is solid. Row-level security works well once you understand it. The storage layer handles file uploads. For my Njin Method clients, Supabase is often the first thing I set up. It gives us a source of truth immediately.

If a project is simple and does not need relational data, I will use something lighter. But that is rare. Supabase handles most of what I need.

Supabase gives you a real database, an API, and auth, before you have written a single line of backend code.

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Layer 5: design

shadcn/ui is how I avoid designing from scratch. It is a component library that gives you production-quality UI components you copy into your project. They are not installed as a dependency. You own the code. You can change anything.

I use it for every React project. It pairs well with Tailwind CSS, which I also use for all styling. The components look good out of the box. Buttons, modals, forms, tables, all done. I just wire them up to my data.

I use Figma when a client needs to see a design before I build it. But for internal tools and my own projects, I skip Figma entirely. I just build in the browser.

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How the stack fits together

Here is a typical flow for me:

1. I open Cursor and start a new project.
2. I set up Supabase for the database.
3. I give Claude Code a task to scaffold the app structure.
4. I pull in shadcn/ui components as I need them.
5. I push to GitHub and Vercel picks it up automatically.

The whole cycle from idea to live app can be a few hours. Sometimes less. That is what a vibe coding workflow actually looks like in practice. Fast iterations, AI doing the repetitive work, me making decisions about what to build next.

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What this stack costs

Rough monthly costs if you are starting out:

• Cursor: about $20 per month
• Claude Code: $20 to $100 per month depending on usage
• Vercel: free to $20 per month
• Supabase: free to $25 per month
• A small VPS for self-hosting: $5 to $10 per month

You can get started for under $50 per month. For the speed you get, that is cheap.

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Is this the best vibe coding stack?

It is the best one for how I work. You might swap things out.

Some people prefer Windsurf over Cursor. Some use Railway instead of Vercel. Some use Firebase instead of Supabase. The tools matter less than the workflow. If you want to compare options, the best vibe coding tools post covers the alternatives properly.

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FAQ

What is the best AI agent for vibe coding?
Claude Code is my pick. It handles full-codebase context, runs autonomously, and makes real changes. It is not just autocomplete.

Do I need to know how to code to use this stack?
Some coding knowledge helps. You will be reviewing AI output and making decisions. But you do not need to write everything from scratch. That is the point.

Is Supabase good for production apps?
Yes. I run production client systems on Supabase. It is Postgres. It is reliable. The free tier has limits, but the paid plans are reasonable.

Can this stack handle bigger client work?
I use it for Njin Method clients across 14+ businesses. It scales fine when you build it properly. The tools are production-grade.

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If you want to talk about building with this stack for your business, book a session here.