Questions, answered straight.

Vibe coding means building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting AI write the code. Tell a tool like Lovable, Bolt, or Claude Code "build me a landing page for my product" and you get working code back. It's not magic. It works best with clear descriptions and iteration. See the full vibe coding guide.

Minimum: any modern computer, Raspberry Pi 4+, or a VPS with 2GB RAM and 20GB storage. Recommended: a Mac Mini M4 ($599 one-time) or a Hetzner VPS (€4.15/month) for always-on operation. For running local AI models, you'll want 8GB+ RAM. See the VPS hosting guide for server options.

For anything that needs to run around the clock, yes. A VPS runs 24/7 without you leaving your laptop on, costs $6–$24/month, and you get a clean Linux environment. DigitalOcean is our top pick with the best docs, the easiest setup, and plans from $6/mo. Full details at our VPS guide.

Add keys as environment variables in your shell profile:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."
Then run source ~/.zshrc to reload. Never put API keys directly in config files that might be committed to git. Set spending limits at your provider dashboards.

Set hard limits at your AI provider dashboards:
• Anthropic: console.anthropic.com → Billing → Usage limits
• OpenAI: platform.openai.com → Billing → Usage limits

We recommend starting with a $50/month cap and adjusting based on actual usage. Route everyday tasks to cheaper models and save the expensive ones for complex work.

Absolutely. Daily morning briefings, price monitors, email summarizers, GitHub PR watchers, crypto alerts, web scrapers, and much more. See 50+ real automation examples. Most of them need no code at all. You just describe what you want.

A self-hosted agent runs entirely on your hardware. Your conversations, files, and automations never leave your machine unless you explicitly use a cloud AI model (like Anthropic or OpenAI), in which case only the necessary message context is sent. Use local models via Ollama for complete privacy, where nothing leaves your network at all.

Cheapest cloud model: GPT-5 Mini at ~$0.15/M input tokens, great for simple tasks and quick Q&A.

Best value: Kimi K2.5 at ~$0.50–1/M tokens with a 256K context window.

Free: Local models via Ollama (Llama 3.2, Mistral) with zero API cost, running on your hardware. Check the full comparison table.

Yes. Install Ollama and pull any compatible model. Llama 3.2 (3B) is great for most tasks and runs on 4GB+ RAM. Llama 3.1 (8B) is more capable and needs 8GB+ RAM. Setup: curl -fsSL https://ollama.ai/install.sh | sh && ollama pull llama3.2. Zero ongoing costs.

OpenRouter is a meta-provider that gives you access to 200+ models through a single API key. You can use Claude, GPT-5, Gemini, Mistral, and many more without juggling multiple API keys. See the model comparison for how it stacks up.