I vibe coded my own Google Sheets replacement just to get dark mode

Published Oct 31, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT Korbin is a Linux system administrator who spends most of his time in a terminal figuring out how things actually work. Over the last decade he's written hundreds of articles about Linux configuration, troubleshooting weird problems, and using open-source tools in the real world. He also works a lot with Windows systems and networking, especially in mixed environments where things don't always behave the way the documentation says they should. Writing things down is how he makes sense of it all and hopefully saves someone else a few hours. Dark mode is the first setting I enable in anything that I open on my PC. We've finally reached a point now where most apps and websites will automatically adjust themselves to the preference you've set in your OS. But Google Sheets is one of the few things I open frequently that forces me to use light mode. After staring at muted colors for hours, opening Google Sheets is like someone shining a flashlight in my eyes. I finally got sick of it last week and decided to take a crack at building my own web-based spreadsheets app. I was even further encouraged after hearing about someone rebuilding Adobe's software suite with Claude. It took an afternoon, but Claude Code managed to develop a very usable and performant spreadsheets app that I now host on my personal website, and I've since imported all my old Google Sheets into it. Not only does it have dark mode, but it can do most of what Google Sheets can do, along with a slew of custom features I'd always wanted. My spreadsheet app works like Google Sheets And incorporates some custom features too I'm calling the app Simple Sheets for now, because the original idea was to build a stripped-down version of Google Sheets that contains only the features I ordinarily need. It's only a week old, but since its inception, I've gotten Claude to tack on a lot more features. The initial version was completely usable, but it was missing stuff like filters, dropdown selectors, and version history. Almost everything from Google Sheets is now in the app. There were also a few customizations I wanted (beyond the dark mode toggle), so I had Claude Code put those in, too. Whenever I have a dropdown that changes a cell's background color, and I select multiple options, I want the background color to become a compromise between the two (or more) I selected. It's just a niche thing that I thought was cool, but it's not something I could do in Google Sheets or Excel. Claude handled 100% of the development. I have a rented VPS that runs a Node.js server for my personal website, and Claude Code is already installed on the system. All I needed to do was point it to my site's directory and give it a pretty thorough prompt of what I wanted it to make. The prompt included a list of must-haves, but I also threw in, "If I'm missing any other features in my list that you think are important, include those, too." I'm glad I did, because it mixed in a bunch more minor stuff that I didn't think about, like freezing rows and columns, word wrapping, and at least a dozen other options. My Claude Pro subscription allows me a certain amount of usage every five hours, and I ran over the limit twice while the model was working on the initial version of the app. That's really the only reason that development took all afternoon — most of it was spent waiting for the usage reset. Subsequent requests for individual features didn't consume more tokens than most of my usual prompts; it was just the initial build that was heavy on usage. Is this the future of software development? No need to download an app when you can create it Having my own spreadsheets app and no longer needing to rely on Google Sheets is great, but it's even more exciting (and scary sometimes) to think about what this could mean for the future of software. At least for basic programs and apps, it has become almost trivial to develop the things we need ourselves, as opposed to looking online for something to download or buy. The good news, for consumers anyway, is that pricey software and SaaS subscriptions may start to lose their footing. If I need an expensive software suite, I'll certainly consider whether I can get by with an open-source vibe-coded alternative before opening my wallet to spring for the real deal. Even if it ends up being a slight compromise on quality or robustness, the fact I can actually own the software, along with the money it saves, is too big of an advantage to ignore. Simple Sheets is the first thing I've made to replace something that I was using every day, but after seeing how good it is, I've got some other apps on my radar to hit next. My SSH terminal, FTP client, and screenshot tool are all on the chopping block. For AI, these are relatively straightforward tools to develop, and I could pack them with a bunch of custom features and aesthetics that I've always felt were lacking from what's available online. The search continues for what else I can replace. It doesn't have every feature... yet Charts and graphs are still missing You may have noticed an important feature missing from the screenshots in this article: charts and graphs. They're a prominent feature of both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel, but my version doesn't support them yet. Truth is, my app is brand new, and I simply haven't gotten around to including everything. I purposely left the visualization tools out for now, since Claude had plenty to work on already. I'm triaging features based on what I use the most, and I very rarely reach for a bar graph or pie chart. Something like this will probably never be a one-prompt project, regardless of how good AI gets. I've uncovered a handful of unintended behaviors and quirks in my app after using it for a few hours. Claude patches them quickly, so it hasn't been a problem, but I'm sure I'll keep finding more. The app has always been perfectly functional, but getting the same level of polish that Google Sheets offers will take more testing and more time. Consumers can just make their own software now It finally happened. Now, when I need a new app, I consider making it myself before going online to see what's available. It takes more effort, but I can get exactly what I want instead of hunting for something with the specific functions I need. This replacement for Google Sheets is just the beginning.