📆 The LoCode Lowdown Ep1

This weeks 1M to $5K 💰️ Challenges and Whats in 2.0 ❤️

Author

Oliver Green
April 26, 2025

🛋️ This Week in the Lounge

I’ve been reading newletters, looking at branding, deciding if this is the right path for me and asking the question “can I build a community of like minded Vibe coders”. Then I was inspired by reading X.com, bolt came out swinging, Lovable is crushing it and the term Vibe coding is sticking around, so I’m in.

☕️ Coffee at the ready, settle in. Let’s get into it. 🚀

Here is the code-free catch-up

⚡️ Bolt.new Just Levelled Up

🚀 What’s New:

Bolt has improved its AI-powered UI generation, and the results?
Way cleaner layouts, smarter sections, and UI. They’re clearly pushing toward that sweet spot between ✨aesthetic ✨ and functional

Bolt.new has just rolled out a significant update to its AI-powered design engine, enhancing its ability to generate cleaner, more responsive, and production-ready user interfaces from simple prompts. This improvement aims to streamline the app-building process for creators, enabling them to transform ideas into functional designs more efficiently

🏆 Build Challenge + Hackathon

To flex this new UI magic, Bolt just announced a $5K Build Challenge — yes, real cash money.

To showcase these advancements, Bolt has announced a $5,000 Design Challenge. Participants are invited to create stunning designs using only Bolt's new AI capabilities. To enter, quote tweet Bolt's announcement post with a video demonstration and a link to your creation. The most impressive submissions will be recognized and rewarded.

They also launched an open Hackathon to show what’s possible when you mix bold ideas with no-code UI generation.

Bolt is hosting the World’s Largest Hackathon, offering over $1 million in prizes. This event is open to everyone, from seasoned developers to newcomers, and encourages participants to build applications using AI, without the need for traditional coding. The hackathon runs from May 30 to June 30, 2025, providing a platform for innovators to bring their ideas to life and gain exposure in the tech community.

❝

use this link to earn 200 free tokens when you sign-up

bolt.new

❤️ Lovable 2.0 Just Dropped

Lovable just rolled out Version 2.0, and it's a big glow-up. The focus? Making it easier than ever to build full-stack apps without writing code — now with tighter prompts, improved AI logic, and faster UI generation. It’s more stable, more powerful, and designed for anyone who wants to go from “vibe” to viable product.

  • New Brand and UI

  • Multiplayer - Adding workspaces and collaboration

  • Chat-mode is live (now 10x smarter)

  • Security Scan checking for vulnerabilities in you app ( ✅ this is a really important step for using Vibe coding to viable product)

  • Dev-mode - (already released but improved) Visually edit any styles in Lovable, for faster and more precise edits.

  • Custom Domains - (Again not new to 2.0 but very welcomed)

  • And pricing updates (increases actually, but simplified)

Click to try Lovable

✨ ChatGPT offers more P

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, made an exciting announcement this week regarding the company's services for its Plus subscribers. He revealed that OpenAI has successfully doubled the rate limits for two of its popular models, o3 and o4-mini

So if you’ve been exceeding them, then enjoy the increase 😃 

💡 Idea Spark

Ever heard of Skeuomorphism?

Skeuomorphism refers to a design approach where digital elements are designed to resemble real-world objects or interfaces. This can include mimicking the appearance, texture, or functionality of physical objects to make digital interactions feel more familiar and intuitive. Famously used by Apple on the orginal iPhone to IPhone 3G before Jonny Ive took the reigns and redesigned the software.

Consider experimenting with this design style when crafting your Vibe coding prompts. Comment and let me know how you got on.

📱 App I am loving

Notion is such a useful tool, sure there are plenty of ways to document and share pages, but I find Notion to be particularly useful for recording app dev, to do lists for your tasks, storing prompts and links to useful documents. Its a Vibe Coders friend.

Here’s a little detail if you’ve not heard of Notion.

Notion is an all-in-one productivity app that blends note-taking, task management, databases, and collaboration into a single, flexible workspace. It’s great for solo creators and teams who want to organize ideas, manage projects, or build systems without switching between multiple tools. Think of it as a digital HQ where docs, to-dos, and workflows live together and grow with your needs.

🧘 Vibe of the Week

Sam Altman of Open AI fame sums it up perfectly this week, we used to laugh at the elderly typing “please” and “thank you” to Google, now we are all doing it. Out of respect or fear, you decided.

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