When Vibe Coding Needs a Second Opinion

I needed a quick way to blur student faces in photos, so I vibe coded an app called Secure Obscure. The selection and blurring all happen directly in the browser, so images never leave your device or get uploaded to a website. When you’re working with student photos, that kind of privacy matters.

I vibe coded my Secure Obscure app with Gemini. My initial prompt was:

I would like to build an HTML app where I upload an image. Then I'm given a lasso tool, circle tool, and rectangle select tool used to blur parts of a photo, mostly faces in a photo. The user can control the level of blur. When done, the photo can be downloaded.

I also used my App-ily Ever After Gemini Gem to brainstorm names for this app. I’ve trained the Gem to suggest playful app names using alliteration, rhymes, portmanteaus, and phrase swaps. After generating several ideas, I landed on a rhyming name.

Like most vibe coding projects, the Secure Obscure took several rounds of revisions. I hit a wall when Gemini just could not get the blur feature working correctly on my iPhone. We went through about 10 iterations, and the selected parts of the image still wouldn’t blur on mobile devices.

So I copied the HTML code into Claude and explained the issue. Claude reviewed the code, spotted the problem, and fixed it after two more iterations.

That experience reminded me that building with AI is often less about finding the perfect chatbot and more about knowing when to switch tools. One AI helped me name the app. Another helped me debug it. Sometimes the fastest path forward is a second opinion from a different chatbot.