Artificial Intelligence1 min read

The Sunk Cost Fallacy of a Vibe-Coded Custom SaaS

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

Posebook was developed using Ruby on Rails and MongoDB to coordinate recurring Monday art gatherings at Enoch’s Arts & Coffee. The platform automates venue logistics, participant privacy controls, transactional emails, and Google Calendar scheduling. To write the software, the developer leaned on the GitHub Copilot CLI to implement features, update tests, and submit pull requests. However, the creator now questions the investment, noting that tools like Dots or Muse could have handled the workload without custom engineering.

Key points

  • Extensive AI agent assistance can accelerate feature creep for small projects that origin…: Extensive AI agent assistance can accelerate feature creep for small projects that originally had limited operational needs.
  • Off-the-shelf software alternatives like Dots or Muse often eliminate the necessity of bu…: Off-the-shelf software alternatives like Dots or Muse often eliminate the necessity of building custom platforms from scratch.
  • Software creators risk falling into the sunk cost fallacy when dedicating extensive engin…: Software creators risk falling into the sunk cost fallacy when dedicating extensive engineering resources to single, small-scale weekly events.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

I organize a weekly figure-drawing session at Enoch’s Arts & Coffee in Manhattan. It runs every Monday at 6:30pm and costs $20. It’s regularly attended and we were even written up in W42ST. Like any small event, it comes with the usual collection of emails, date juggling, private contact details, and calendar invitations.

So, I decided to build a custom SaaS called Posebook to automate all that.

The Plan

The original idea was that models would register, choose a date, and get a reminder a week before posing. I chose Rails and MongoDB because I already use both, and started with one venue and one recurring program. The application now organizes venues, recurring programs, organizers, invitations, bookings, attendance, and public schedules. It is open source, and the hosted instance serves Enoch’s, but could work for your event, too.

The organizer creates a venue, adds its location, and sets up one or more recurring programs. A program owns its schedule, booking rules, and managers. The organizer sends a private invitation link to a participant, who creates an account if needed and…

Artificial Intelligence