Developer vibe-codes a directory of free parking spots in St. Petersburg and across Russia

The author of a Habr post explains how his personal notes on free parking spots in central St. Petersburg grew into the idea of a public directory built through vibe coding. At first, he simply marked these spots on a map for himself, but the list soon started getting passed around among his friends and acquaintances.

How the project started

It began as a personal habit. For a long time, the author pinned free parking spots in the city center on a map so he wouldn't have to hunt for them again every time. The list proved so popular with the people around him that it went from a personal cheat sheet to a ready-made resource that kept getting shared. That raised a question for the author: could a "little list for friends" become a project useful to a much wider audience, not just a small circle?

• Original format: personal map notes on free parking in central St. Petersburg
• The list spread among the author's friends and acquaintances without any deliberate promotion
• The plan: turn the personal collection into a publicly useful project
• The scope expands from St. Petersburg to a directory covering Russia as a whole
• The author's key question: what technical challenges come up when you try to vibe-code a production-ready app

Why vibe coding fits a project like this

Vibe coding is a development practice in which AI models write a large share of the code from a natural-language description of the task, rather than a developer writing it line by line. The project started as a personal utility with no development team in mind, and for that kind of project the approach lowers the barrier to entry: you can turn a personal list of map pins into a working service with a database, search, and a user interface without bringing in a professional team from day one. At the same time, moving from a personal tool to a public service used by strangers is exactly the jump in complexity the author describes.

A production-ready app needs resilience, up-to-date data, and a clear interface, not just a working prototype for personal use.

What it means

The free parking directory shows how vibe coding narrows the gap between a personal idea and a working public service. You no longer have to be a professional development team to try turning data you've collected yourself into a product useful to many people. But getting from a prototype to a genuinely reliable app still means solving nontrivial technical problems.