Vibe coding: Child theme edition

My latest personal vibe coding efforts involved utilizing AI coding partners to improve the structure of my automated article portfolio tool and, once that was working, integrating the portfolio more completely into my site.

Recent articles from my work now appear on the home page and on the sidebar for my posts. The system will check for new articles every day and update the archive. A JSON file updated in that process feeds the new widgets on my site.

A few of the most recent will be displayed for the audience, while I am also able to collect a more complete list for myself over time.

While I was adding the portfolio widgets, my AI partners also helped me to update some of the elements of my freeware theme that I’ve always wanted to change: No more unnecessary icons on cards that are obviously clickable, coloring changes and nice responsive animations that bring the site a little more up-to-date.

It’s simple overall, but it’s also a breakthrough for me. With AI vibe coding help I was finally able to make changes that I couldn’t accomplish on my own over several years.

And that’s the gist of my professional projects as well — finding ways to use AI tools to accomplish things I know are needed and possible but would otherwise be outside my native skill set. I can bring the initiative and establish the boundaries for operation, but use tools like Claude, OpenAI, Gemini and Lovable to bring that vision to my teammates.