Experiments is where I build and ship small products outside of work—fast, messy, and real. It's my playground for vibe-coding, prototyping in code, and exploring AI as part of the design process. Not polished case studies, just honest snapshots of how I think, make decisions, and stay current.
Debeo is a small, private expense tracker I'm building for my brother and me to replace a messy Excel workflow. It's my playground for vibe-coding, rapid prototyping, and exploring what an AI-enabled product designer can ship on nights/weekends—without waiting for a "perfect" work case study.
We manage shared + personal expenses with an Excel sheet that "works"… until it doesn't:
- Too many manual steps (copy/paste, categories, splitting, balances).
- The mobile experience is not good for a table based product and 80% of the time we log expenses on
mobile and not on desktop.
- Easy to break formulas / lose consistency over time.
- Hard to answer simple questions fast: "How much did we spend on X last month?"
- Me + my brother (busy, not accounting-obsessed, want clarity without friction).
- Future-friendly by design (so it could scale to more people later), but right now it's intentionally
built for our needs first.
- We stop using the spreadsheet for day-to-day tracking.
- Logging an expense takes <10 seconds.
- Monthly totals, category breakdowns, and "who owes who" are always correct.
- Private product (not open-source, not public-facing).
- Must work well on mobile first (where expenses happen).
- Needs to support "real life" cases: split expenses, recurring bills, reimbursements, multi-currency
(USD/COP).
This is intentionally an experiment in modern product-making:
- Vibe-coded prototyping: I iterate quickly from idea → working flow → refine
- AI as a teammate: fast scaffolding, edge-case mapping, UI copy variants, validation rules, and data
modeling drafts
- Design + build loop: I'm not doing "perfect Figma first." I'm using design thinking while shipping
the experience in code, tightening the UX as I go.
- AI helps a ton, but only when I'm clear about the job-to-be-done and constraints.
1. Quick add expense (amount → category → notes → done).
2. Split logic (mine / his / shared) + settlement tracking.
3. Monthly view with totals and category rollups.
4. Simple insights (top categories, trends, "where did the money go?").
- Fast by default: reduce typing, smart defaults.
- Low shame UX: friendly, lightweight, keeps you moving.
- Clarity > complexity: don't turn it into accounting software.