Did I make this?

I have used Lovable (a Claude wrapper) in the past to make some tools for personal use. My physical media vault, financial data visualiser, and a few other apps hosted on a personal subdomain were made with it. “Vibe-coding” is the term that generally describes this practice, and I used it to refer to my projects when I blogged about them. Recently I have developed a slight aversion to it. I have not become completely unsympathetic to the term, but I have grown a bit wary of it, just like I would have with most other buzzwords in the technology space.

Similarly, over the last few months alone, my thoughts on AI-based tools have changed drastically¹ as I read and learn more about them. The initial enthusiasm I had when tools like ChatGPT and Claude first became widely available to the public has waned somewhat. I’ve made a conscious effort to limit my use of AI in personal life (although I don’t always have that luxury at work).²

I am happy with the tools I made, and have been using them regularly. I put a lot of thought into them; the design, the typography, all the functionality I wanted them to have, were all carefully chosen by me. But I didn’t write a single line of code. Can I still say that I made them?

A casual online conversation that happened the other day gave me cause to think about this. Tabitha mentioned that she had been browsing my physical media collection app. I immediately said that I didn’t make it myself, and then James said that it still had my “essence” (or some words to that effect, I can’t remember exactly). I added that I would take full credit for how the app looked and worked, because I prompted Lovable to make it that way.

Can something I didn’t create have my essence? Am I ascribing too narrow a definition to the word create here? Was the coding tool in this instance simply a vehicle for my creativity, or something else entirely? Where does the essence of billions of lines of code Claude was trained on to develop the ability to spit out any functionality I wanted within a few seconds end, and I begin?

This is not an attempt to arrive at an answer, or even to argue the fact one way or the other. I may be inclined to engage in that exercise some day, but for now I simply want to put this in writing, as a record of sorts. To plant a flag. A reminder to my future self that I have been thinking about this.