Developer vibe-coded a catalog of free parking in St. Petersburg and Russia

A developer who posted on Habr shared how personal notes about free parking spots in central Saint Petersburg evolved into an idea for a public catalog created through vibe coding. Initially, he simply marked such places on a map for himself, but the list quickly started spreading among friends and acquaintances.

How the project started

The starting point was a personal habit: the author spent a long time marking free parking spots in the center of the city on a map so he wouldn't have to search for them again each time. The list turned out to be so useful to the people around him that it evolved from a personal cheat sheet into a ready-made resource that people shared further. This prompted the author to ask a question — could he develop a "list for friends" into a project useful not just to a small circle, but to a much wider audience.

• Initial format — personal notes on a map about free parking spots in central Saint Petersburg
• The list began circulating among the author's friends and acquaintances without special promotion
• Development idea — transform a personal collection into a publicly useful project
• Geography expands from Saint Petersburg to a catalog for Russia as a whole
• The author's key question — what technical challenges arise when trying to vibe-code a production-ready application

Why vibe coding works for such a project

Vibe coding is a development practice where a significant portion of code is written with the help of AI models based on a description of a task in natural language, rather than line by line manually. For a project that started as a personal utility and did not assume a team of developers, such an approach lowers the barrier to entry: you can turn a personal list of points on a map into a working service with a database, search, and user interface without involving a professional team from the start. At the same time, the transition from a personal tool to a public service used by strangers is the very leap in complexity that the author writes about: a production-ready application requires reliability, data freshness, and an understandable interface, not just a working prototype for yourself.

The jump from a hobby project to something that genuinely needs to be stable and trustworthy — that's where vibe coding alone isn't enough.

What this means

The story with the free parking catalog is an example of how vibe coding lowers the barrier between a personal idea and a working public service: to try turning accumulated personal data into a useful product for many, you no longer have to be a professional development team — but the transition from a prototype to a truly reliable application still requires solving non-trivial technical challenges.