No‑Code vs AI Vibe Coding: Why I Stopped Fighting Automation Platforms
I didn’t need a startup‑grade platform. I needed my small business to stop bleeding time on invoices and timesheets.
On paper, the job looked “simple”: automate invoice handling. In reality, the workflow was richer than expected:
Scan emails for invoices and save them to the correct Google Drive folder (by year, month, and vendor)
Generate client invoices from developer timesheets and email them automatically
Remind developers to submit timesheets on time
Handle edge cases and conditions around all of the above
This is the kind of “small” back‑office work that quietly eats evenings
The No‑Code Promise (And Where It Broke)
If you scroll LinkedIn long enough, the conclusion is always the same:
“Use a no‑code platform. You don’t need technical people anymore. Old‑school CTOs bring no value.”
Founders proudly share how they built full products on tools like N8N in a week or two, without a single developer. So I followed the hype and started with a no‑code automation platform.
Almost immediately, I hit three walls.
First, I had to learn the platform’s entire mini‑universe: concepts, terminology, UI, how they think about flows, triggers, and blocks. Instead of focusing on my domain (emails, invoices, vendors, months, timesheets), I had to first understand their domain.
Second, the platform wrapped Gmail, Drive, and everything else behind its own abstractions. I know roughly how Google’s APIs are structured, but inside the tool the mapping wasn’t intuitive. The real power of the APIs was there, but half‑hidden and renamed.
Third, debugging was painful. To test whether a tiny part of the logic worked, I had to run the whole flow manually and step through it. As a CTO I’ve spent years teaching teams to move from “click‑debugging” to proper testing. Here I was, back to clicking, waiting, and hoping.
Fourth, ai chat inside or around the platform didn’t save me either. The UI changes fast, documentation is incomplete, and anything slightly non‑standard (“detect invoice, route to vendor folder, use timesheets to generate invoices”) often falls between the cracks.
After 1–2 weeks, the automation mostly worked. But it took way more effort than it should have. I even started considering hiring a no‑code specialist to handle it for me — which is a funny twist on “you don’t need technical people anymore.”
Switching To Vibe Coding With AI
At that point I asked a different question:
What if I stop fighting the no‑code tool and instead use AI to help me write small, focused pieces of real code? So I moved the whole thing to Google Apps Script, but with AI as my pair‑programmer.
I described what I needed in natural language:
how to scan emails, detect invoices, route them into folders by year/month/vendor, process timesheets, generate invoices, send them out, and ping developers for reminders.
AI helped me draft the scripts, structure the modules, and wire them into Gmail and Drive. I then iterated: added tests, refined the logic, and used the real API docs whenever something subtle was needed.
In about two days, I had:
Scripts that inspect emails and attachments for invoices.
Logic that saves files into
year/month/vendorfolders automatically.Workflows to process developers’ timesheets, generate invoices, and email them to clients.
Reminders to developers to fill or verify their timesheets.
Tests around the critical paths, so changes don’t break everything.
No visual flows, no hidden abstractions — just code I understand and own.
Why AI Coding Won
For me, vibe coding with AI beat no‑code on three key axes.
Control: I can open any script, see exactly what’s happening, and change it. If the workflow grows, I’m not stuck waiting for a vendor to add just‑one‑more‑block.
Testing: I can write small tests around essential behavior instead of manually replaying whole flows, again and again, for every small change.
Reality: I work directly with real APIs and documentation. AI helps me bridge the gaps, but the underlying model is transparent and durable.
The Industry Shift (And Where I’m Betting)
To be fair, no‑code platforms are also moving toward AI. Some now let you describe a flow in natural language and they generate it for you. That’s a healthy direction and I might test it again in the future.
But the larger shift, which I wrote about in more detail in:
“SaaS Without AI Integration Will Die — Here’s Why” on Maks Notes, is this:
The core skill isn’t “dragging blocks” or even “writing code by hand.”
It’s being able to express intent clearly and let AI translate that into something executable — ideally on a platform you truly control.
For my business, that currently means AI‑assisted coding beats no‑code.
If You’re On The AI Coding Path
If you’re already leaning into AI coding, you can push it even further.
At Clear Solutions, we’re building tools exactly for that:
AI Commit by Mavka helps you write clean, professional commit messages without wasting brainpower on wording.[link]
AI Test by Mavka helps you automate test creation, so you don’t slide back into manual debugging when your scripts grow.[link]
If you’re interested in trying them, contact me — I’m happy to share a free license so you can feel what happens when AI is paired with real code, proper testing, and full control, not just another visual layer on top.