The Vibe Coding Census — July 2026 (Vol. 1)

Next.js is the default, not a choice

Of the 332 projects we fingerprinted, 150 — 45% — serve Next.js markers. Vite-built SPAs are a distant second at 51. Everything else is a rounding error.

We don't think 150 makers independently evaluated frameworks and converged. The AI tools did: Claude, Cursor, v0, Lovable and Bolt all reach for Next.js when you say “build me an app.” Vibe coding doesn't just change who builds — it centralizes how everything gets built. The default stack of the AI era is whatever the models were trained to reach for.

Hosting: the Vercel–Cloudflare duopoly

Vercel headers show up on 129 projects, Cloudflare on 119 (often as the CDN in front of something else). The classic indie stack of a VPS and nginx has practically vanished from this population: deploy is a git push or a prompt, never a server.

Builders build for builders

Developer tools and productivity apps top the chart — a third of the gallery. The first instinct of someone who just gained the power to ship software is, apparently, to fix their own workflow. Games, education and health are underweight relative to how often they're tried once published — an opportunity, if you're deciding what to build this weekend.

Almost everything is one click away

326 of 332 projects (98%) work without creating an account. That's partly our curation bar — we favor things a visitor can try today — but mostly a real cultural norm: vibe-coded software ships open by default. The signup wall, the waitlist, the “book a demo” button — those belong to a different economics, where software was expensive to make and every visitor had to be converted. When a weekend produces a working product, you just let people in.

Where these projects come from

91% of the gallery was first spotted on X — mostly in “drop what you're building” threads where makers announce their work. Show HN contributes a steady trickle. If you want to know what people are building with AI this week, the answer is: read the replies.