Jazz, Community, and Vibe Coding: What a Broken Website Taught Me About AI

Those who know me know this about me: I’m a music nut. Vinyl, jazz, blues. It’s not a casual interest; it’s part of who I am. My grandfather was a jazz musician. I sing jazz. Jazz has shaped how I listen, how I think, and how I move through the world.

Because of that, I volunteer with a local jazz and blues festival in the city where I live, named the Barrie Jazz and Blues festival

The festival was founded by a gentleman who is deeply passionate and incredibly knowledgeable. Decades of relationships live in his head. Artists, venues, booking quirks, histories, phone numbers, inside knowledge you can’t Google. As he’s gotten older, a few of us have started stepping in to help, and that’s when reality hit.

The website went down.

And when I say “went down,” I mean the kind of down that tells you a bigger story. The site was being maintained using Macromedia Dreamweaver on Windows XP. For those who know, you just felt your knees crack reading that sentence :)

When we talked about rebuilding it, our reference point was a six-month project and around $10,000. A painful process that felt overwhelming before it even began.

I told him to give me a week ;)

What I didn’t tell him was that I’d been itching to properly dive into the new wave of AI “vibe coding” tools. I run a software company, but I don’t know how to code. I’m a skilled user. I understand systems, workflows, and product thinking. Until recently, that still meant you needed a developer to bring anything real to life.

So I opened Replit and started building.

What I ended up creating wasn’t just a website. It was a full web application. A public-facing site paired with a complete backend system that manages venues, artists, artist contact information, show history, internal notes, and user access. A foundation for succession planning. A place where knowledge could finally live outside one person’s head.

From ideation to deployment, it took about 12 hours of actual build time spread across a week. I did it entirely myself.

Friends who run development firms told me the same thing afterward. A year ago, this would have been a six-month project costing $10,000 to $15,000. Easily.

That contrast is the point of this story.

I understand there’s a dark side to this shift. I run a software company. I’m very aware this will disrupt jobs. That tension is real, and it deserves serious conversation.

But here’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Within months, not years, the ability to build software and websites like this could be accessible to that 70-year-old man himself. Not to become a developer, but to express ideas, preserve knowledge, and solve problems without waiting, budgeting, or begging for help.

That’s not just efficiency. That’s empowerment.

As I built the site, I leaned into the thing that inspired the whole project. Jazz. The front-end concept was loosely inspired by a Blue Note album. Moody. Minimal. Timeless. Letting the content breathe. Improvisational, but structured underneath.

That’s how the process felt too. Less like coding, more like riffing. Asking questions. Adjusting. Trying something, listening, responding. AI didn’t replace thinking; it amplified it.

The real unlock wasn’t speed. It was agency.

This festival now has a living system instead of a fragile website. A way to onboard new volunteers. A way to protect decades of relationships. A way to evolve without losing its soul.

And I walked away with a much deeper appreciation for what’s opening up in front of us.

We’re not just automating tasks. We’re lowering the barrier between ideas and reality. Between passion and execution. Between “someone should build this” and “I’ll build this.”

That’s a transformation I don’t think we’ve fully wrapped our heads around yet. Jazz taught me that structure enables freedom. AI is starting to feel the same way.