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I Tried 4 AI App Builders: Here’s the Cold, Hard Reality
#Tested #App #Builders.. #Heres #Brutal #Truth
Today’s coding cage match features four AI app builders: v0 by Vercel, Replit agent, bolt.new, and lovable.dev. I’m deliberately avoiding Cursor because I’m not a developer. Seriously, I look at that homepage code and might as well be reading hieroglyphics! When I see “console.log,” I’m guessing it’s doing… something?
Other videos reviewing these tools drive me insane. They’re always made by actual developers who casually drop lines like “just modify line 42” or “just host it on Vercel” like it’s nothing. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here wondering what NPM even stands for! So today, you’re getting the real non-developer perspective – from someone who describes himself as a “complete noob” at coding.
My goal is ambitious: go from prompt to complete app with user logins, database functionality, and API connections – all in one shot. No shortcuts. I’m building a meta app called “prompt to prototype” for product managers who want AI-generated mockups. Yes, we’re using AI to build an AI app… my brain hurts already.
The login experience reveals our first winner – Lovable lets me sign in with Google while others force GitHub login (who even has that?!). After pasting my epic prompt into each tool, Bolt immediately starts building but confronts me with a terminal full of gibberish. I’m literally begging it, “Just make the app” instead of asking me questions I can’t answer!
V0 generates a UI blazingly fast, but when I test it… disaster! Icons aren’t loading, text is getting cut off, and the hover effects are so fancy they’re actually breaking functionality. But then… whoa… their phone mockups are absolutely gorgeous. I’m drooling over these designs despite the broken functionality.
Lovable shows promise with nice selection effects, but ultimately disappoints with misaligned text and a more basic design than V0. Meanwhile, Replit takes forever (19+ minutes!) but delivers the most complete experience – actual working icons, thoughtful AI model selection, and clean interfaces.
Here’s the brutal truth no one’s telling you: after testing an app looking 90% complete, I’ve spent eight hours trying to implement a simple API call that should take minutes. You tell these tools “only add the API connection, don’t touch anything else” and they’ll still randomly change your UI library or completely break something else.
The verdict? All four tools failed my complete app test. But Replit came closest to something I’d confidently hand to a developer to finish. V0 made the prettiest mockups by far. Lovable had some nice touches but fell short. And poor Bolt crashed and burned.
If you’re a developer, this is the golden age. These tools can generate a solid foundation in minutes that you can actually fix and finish. But for non-technical folks like me? We’re still stuck in the “promising but painful” era. As Nick Bostrom said about AI and humans – the best teams are still “centaurs” (half-human, half-machine).
So next time some video tells you “I built an entire app with AI!” remember this: they’re either a developer who fixed 50 errors behind the scenes, or they’re showing you a pretty but fundamentally broken prototype. The revolution is coming… it’s just not quite here yet.
Timestamps
00:00:00 – Introduction: Sharing decade-long experience testing low-code tools
00:00:18 – Tools Overview: Introducing v0, Replit agent, bolt.new, and lovable.dev
00:00:32 – Non-Developer Perspective: Confessing complete lack of coding knowledge
00:01:05 – Developer Videos Critique: Calling out how other reviewers skip critical technical details
00:01:52 – Project Goals: Setting ambitious target of building complete app from single prompt
00:02:39 – Meta App Concept: Explaining the “prompt to prototype” app for product managers
00:05:31 – Login Experience Comparison: Lovable wins with Google account support
00:07:37 – First UI Victory: v0 and Replit generate interfaces fastest
00:12:38 – v0 Testing: Discovering beautiful UI with broken functionality
00:14:58 – v0 Phone Mockups: Revealing stunning but non-functional designs
00:16:22 – Lovable Interface: Finding decent UI with alignment and padding issues
00:20:12 – The Harsh Truth: Explaining why “just fix this one thing” is actually 8+ hours of work
00:22:30 – Replit’s Success: Showing the most complete solution with proper icon integration
00:24:34 – AI Model Selection: Replit impresses with thoughtful dropdown feature
00:27:18 – Final Rankings: Replit takes first place, v0 and Lovable tie for second
00:30:06 – Developer Advantage: Explaining why these tools are still best for technical users
00:30:29 – Centaur Analogy: Describing ideal mix of human developers with AI assistance
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