Four Vibe-Coded Projects in Six Months: From a 3,721-Line Monolith to an AI That Writes for Itself

The progression from single-file monoliths to automated verification scripts and reusable AI skill files maps a practical path for solo developers who ship with AI assistance. The 33-line brace-checking script and the skill-file approach are concrete, low-cost techniques that prevent the structural rot and context drift that plague vibe-coded projects.

Over six months, four projects emerged from a single developer's personal needs: a sprawling parenting app that ballooned into a game collection, a pixel-art diary explorer written in one commit, a mental-friction questionnaire mini-program, and an AI writing toolchain that publishes to WeChat and Xiaohongshu. The parenting app's Raiden game file grew to 3,721 lines before structural debt forced a painful two-night refactor into eight files. That experience led to a 33-line verification script that scans for mismatched braces and template strings during builds, shifting the work from manually checking AI output to writing tools that check it automatically. The final project introduced a skill system: 127 reusable agent files that encode writing methodology, style constraints, and iterative editing beats, so the AI produces structured prose without repeated prompting. The toolchain now handles the full pipeline from Markdown to published article, leaving only the topic decision to the human.