Add-on Anyone try vibe coding an addon?

[dethfire]

I've been trying to get Cursor using GPT4.1 to create a simple valid xenforo 2.3 addon and it's failing really badly. Missing required files, wrong formats, wrong file structures etc. I wonder if the help docs are not in the LLMs much. Anyone had success?

 

[Ozzy47]

I would not even bother, you'll waste much more time than if you wrote it out yourself.

 

[JustinHawk]

I've been trying to get Cursor using GPT4.1 to create a simple valid xenforo 2.3 addon and it's failing really badly. Missing required files, wrong formats, wrong file structures etc. I wonder if the help docs are not in the LLMs much. Anyone had success?

Well i tried and yeah it fails a lot of time.

I've been trying to get Cursor using GPT4.1 to create a simple valid xenforo 2.3 addon and it's failing really badly.

The best part is this, that sometimes it gives you one of the best ideas on your approach on how you should solve a problem in the addon you are developing.

Though don't bother with creating a full fledge addon with it. It is complete waste of time.

 

[Taylor J]

I wouldn't doubt that vibe coding for addons is so far a disaster. Most of the knowledge that any LLM would get about the structure/logic of XenForo would come from public posts here or random posts on warez forums probably. I've had some times were I tried asking it how to do something in one of the more recent versions of XF but it put in random methods that weren't parent methods on a parent class and much more.

If the LLM's had access to the source code, which to be fair I would think at the least Copilot would if there are instances of people pushing up their entire site to a repo, then they would maybe stand a better chance.

I don't think vibe coding will ever be a real thing for anything but re-creating stuff like doom with TypeScript types. I watched a week long live stream of a few programming content creators, one whom is an ex senior Netflix engineer, where they attempted to vibe code out a game. It took them much longer than needed due to having to fix all of the code given to them.

 

[duderuud]

I tried vibe coding myself. I had a custom built add-on that I wanted to enhance.

Long story short, it works amazingly well!

Never done coding before, never tried vibe coding before. But I am not a complete noob either so I wanted to try. I already heard Claude was one of the best options so I purchased a Claude Pro plan, installed the app on my Macbook and tried.

One of the best things is that you can now directly link your server to your Claude instance. I connected my staging server via an SSH key and asked it to take a look at this specific add-on I wanted to enhance.

It is amazing at how smart Claude is. It took a few minutes for it to look at my Xenforo install and how it all worked.

It took me about 4 sessions to create an updated add-on that did everything I wanted. (The Pro plan limits the amount of time/credits you can use so you have to wait a few hours to continue).

For context, the add-on is a motorsport manager game where I normally enter all the race results manually which is a lot of work (over 100 results every race weekend).

I accepted that process for quite a few years but asked Claude if it would be possible to automate that. It was a long shot imo but hey, I could try.
And what do you know, Claude knew that the results were posted online (of course) but couldn't scrape that data. It tried to find another way and found out that there was an API that could be read.

All in all, now I have a new option in the admin backend to import race results, including a dry run to test it out first. Quite amazing!

Claude could do everything I asked for, even things I thought wouldn't be posible. I am really impressed!

Only thing I do not know is the quality of the add-on. I asked Claude to do a complete sanity check and it found one bug and fixed it but I should find someone that could do a security and Xenforo guidelines check or something. But for now I am really happy because I have an add-on that does everything I want for only a few dollars.

 

[dethfire]

I connected my staging server

The key here is to run in staging and or a sandbox env. I've seen some bad things when given root.

 

[Itworx4me]

I tried vibe coding myself. I had a custom built add-on that I wanted to enhance.

Long story short, it works amazingly well!

Never done coding before, never tried vibe coding before. But I am not a complete noob either so I wanted to try. I already heard Claude was one of the best options so I purchased a Claude Pro plan, installed the app on my Macbook and tried.

One of the best things is that you can now directly link your server to your Claude instance. I connected my staging server via an SSH key and asked it to take a look at this specific add-on I wanted to enhance.

It is amazing at how smart Claude is. It took a few minutes for it to look at my Xenforo install and how it all worked.

It took me about 4 sessions to create an updated add-on that did everything I wanted. (The Pro plan limits the amount of time/credits you can use so you have to wait a few hours to continue).

For context, the add-on is a motorsport manager game where I normally enter all the race results manually which is a lot of work (over 100 results every race weekend).

I accepted that process for quite a few years but asked Claude if it would be possible to automate that. It was a long shot imo but hey, I could try.
And what do you know, Claude knew that the results were posted online (of course) but couldn't scrape that data. It tried to find another way and found out that there was an API that could be read.

All in all, now I have a new option in the admin backend to import race results, including a dry run to test it out first. Quite amazing!

Claude could do everything I asked for, even things I thought wouldn't be posible. I am really impressed!

Only thing I do not know is the quality of the add-on. I asked Claude to do a complete sanity check and it found one bug and fixed it but I should find someone that could do a security and Xenforo guidelines check or something. But for now I am really happy because I have an add-on that does everything I want for only a few dollars.

That’s awesome, sounds like a huge win, especially automating something that time-consuming.

One thing you mentioned that stood out was not being sure about the quality of the add-on. I’ve actually been working on a review tool that analyzes add-ons (whether built by AI or a developer) and compares them against XenForo patterns and best practices.

If you’re interested, I’d be happy to run your add-on through it and share the results, could give you a better idea of where things stand in terms of structure, standards, and potential issues.

Feel free to DM me if you want me to run it through the addon review process.

 

[Seeker-Smith]

I've been trying to get Cursor using GPT4.1 to create a simple valid xenforo 2.3 addon and it's failing really badly. Missing required files, wrong formats, wrong file structures etc. I wonder if the help docs are not in the LLMs much. Anyone had success?

I’m successfully using Gemini Pro. It remembers multiple files and generally works pretty well. ChatGPT was a mess.

 

[tajhay]

I’m successfully using Gemini Pro. It remembers multiple files and generally works pretty well. ChatGPT was a mess.

Claude Code....