I Vibe Coded an AI English Coach for a Hackathon I’ll Probably Never Win

There are 11 days left, hundreds of competitors, and a prize I can almost see. Here’s what I built anyway.

I’ve been building this for the Build with MeDo Hackathon. Here’s my honest take.

First — What Is Vibe Coding?

You’ve probably seen the term everywhere lately.

Here’s how I understand it:

Vibe Coding = building software through conversation instead of syntax

You describe what you want. The AI builds it. You react, refine, redirect. You’re not writing code line by line — you’re steering something that writes it for you.

Some people think that’s cheating. I think those people are still arguing about calculators in math class.

The skill didn’t disappear. It shifted. Now the skill is knowing what to ask, when to push back, and how to recognize when the output is actually good vs just looks good.

That’s harder than it sounds.

ARIA scoring my writing a 25/100. Grade D. Still shipped it.

And What Is MeDo?

MeDo is the platform I built this on. It’s part of what makes vibe coding actually work end-to-end — not just generating code, but iterating on it, connecting APIs, deploying it, and having something real at the end.

Here’s what that felt like in practice:

I didn’t set up a single server. Didn’t configure one environment. Didn’t spend three hours debugging a dependency I didn’t ask for.

I described what I wanted ARIA to do. I reacted to what came back. I pushed it further. 45 times.

And somewhere in those 45 iterations — I had a product.

That’s what MeDo actually is. Not a shortcut. A different path to the same destination — except you spend the whole journey thinking about the thing instead of the infrastructure around the thing.

So What Did I Build?

The idea started with one frustration.

Non-native English speakers — myself included — have been using grammar tools for years. You paste a sentence. It gets “fixed.” You move on.

Next week. Same mistake.

Nobody was learning anything. The tool was covering for us. And we were letting it.

I wanted to build something that explains itself. That tells you why the sentence sounds off. Not just what the corrected version looks like.

That became ARIA — an AI-powered English coaching platform.

Not a grammar checker. A mentor.

👉 Try it live →

[embed]ARIA - Fix Your English in 10 Seconds Turn messy sentences into clear, confident English in seconds.ARIA gives instant AI feedback on grammar, clarity…app-b82pdi5by8sh.appmedo.com

What ARIA Actually Does

1. Live grammar correction — fixes as you type, with reasons
2. Tone analysis — professional, casual, neutral
3. Fluency scoring — not just correct, but natural
4. Vocabulary evaluation — right words for the right context
5. Sentence restructuring — a cleaner version, explained
6. POS tagging — grammar broken down at the word level
7. Progress dashboard — improvement tracked over time
8. Session history — old writing vs now, side by side
9. Calendar streak tracking — consistency over single sessions
10. Coach-style summaries — feedback that sounds like a person

None of this was planned. Each feature came from asking the same question — what would a real writing mentor actually do here?

The 45 Iterations Nobody Talks About

Most vibe coding posts make it sound clean.

“I described what I wanted and it appeared.”

That’s not how it went for me.

I iterated 45 times. Forty-five prompts, tweaks, layout rethinks, “this still feels wrong” moments. Some iterations were tiny. Some rewrote whole sections of the experience.

That loop — frustrating, unglamorous, necessary — is where the product actually becomes something real.

And here’s what surprised me about building with MeDo:

The iteration didn’t drain me. Usually by iteration 10 of anything, I’m fighting the tool as much as the problem. This time I was only ever fighting the problem. The platform just… got out of the way.

That’s rarer than it should be.

Will I Win?

Probably not.

Hundreds of projects. Smart builders everywhere. Slim odds and I know it.

But I built something I’d actually use. Something that came from a real frustration. And if it helps even a few people write with more confidence — understand their mistakes instead of just patching them — it did what it was supposed to.

That’s enough.

One Last Thing

I haven’t submitted yet.

Still tightening things up. Making sure what I hand in actually represents what ARIA is supposed to be — not just what it looks like at 2am on a build day.

If you want to try it in the meantime → 👉 **app-b82pdi5by8sh.appmedo.com**

[embed]ARIA - Fix Your English in 10 Seconds Turn messy sentences into clear, confident English in seconds.ARIA gives instant AI feedback on grammar, clarity…app-b82pdi5by8sh.appmedo.com

And if you’ve been sitting on an idea — the hackathon still has 11 days left. You might not win either. But you’ll build something real. That’s the part that stays with you.

👉 **medo.devpost.com**

Used ARIA? Have thoughts on vibe coding or MeDo? Drop them in the comments — what worked, what didn’t, what you’d build differently. I’m reading everything.

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