5 Vibe Coding Portfolio Projects That Get You Hired

What hiring managers actually care about

Before we get into the projects, let's be honest about what companies hiring for vibe coding roles actually want to see. It's not the most elegant code. It's not the most impressive algorithm. It's evidence of three things:

• You can ship. A deployed, working product beats a beautiful codebase that's never gone live. Every time.
• You make thoughtful decisions. Architecture choices, service selection, trade-off analysis — these reveal how you think.
• You understand what you built. If you can't explain the system, you're a liability, not an asset. AI generates code; engineers understand it.

The projects below are designed to demonstrate all three. Each one is a step up in complexity, uses a different combination of the core vibe coding services, and teaches skills that translate directly to job requirements.

For inspiration on what good product thinking looks like in a vibe-coded project, look at oow.ee — a Boxing & Muay Thai workout iOS app that lets users configure rounds, rest periods, intensity, and choose specific techniques. It's a narrow, opinionated product with clear user value: built with minimal hand-coding using AI tools. That combination of focused scope, real domain knowledge, and deliberate feature choices is exactly what makes a portfolio project stand out.

Project 1: Micro-SaaS waitlist with analytics

Complexity: Beginner · Time: 1 weekend

Stack: Next.js + Supabase + Vercel

Build on the waitlist app from Guide 1, but add an admin dashboard. The admin view shows you how many signups you've had over time, with a simple chart, the ability to export emails as CSV, and a referral counter (track which signup links drive the most signups).

What this teaches you:

• Row-level security in Supabase (only admins can see the dashboard)
• Basic data aggregation queries
• Protected routes with middleware in Next.js

What to document in your portfolio:

• How you designed the database schema (show the SQL)
• The security model — how you prevent non-admins from accessing the dashboard
• A short loom video walking through the product

Project 2: AI-powered content tool

Complexity: Beginner–Intermediate · Time: 1–2 weekends

Stack: Next.js + Supabase + Vercel + OpenAI or Anthropic API

Pick a specific content problem and solve it with AI. Good examples: a Twitter thread generator from a blog post URL, a job description cleaner that removes bias language, a product description writer that takes bullet points and produces polished copy.

The narrower the use case, the better the portfolio piece. "AI writing tool" is vague. "AI tool that turns rough bullet points into Stripe-style product descriptions" shows taste and domain thinking.

What this teaches you:

• Calling AI APIs (OpenAI or Anthropic Claude) from a Next.js API route
• Streaming responses for a better UX
• Saving user outputs to a database for history
• Basic prompt engineering — shaping AI output for consistent results

What to document:

• Your system prompt and why you designed it that way
• Before/after examples showing the tool's impact
• How you handle rate limiting and API errors

Project 3: SaaS with auth and payments

Complexity: Intermediate · Time: 2–3 weekends

Stack: Next.js + Supabase + Stripe + Vercel + Resend

This is the portfolio centrepiece. Build something that people can actually pay for. It doesn't need to be complex — a simple tool that does one thing well is perfect. Some ideas: a link-in-bio builder, a simple invoice generator, a habit tracker with analytics, a changelog tool for your products.

The key addition is Stripe. Real payment integration is the thing most junior developers don't have on their portfolios, because it's traditionally hard to set up. With AI assistance and the Stripe Checkout hosted page, it's achievable in a day.

What this teaches you:

• The full SaaS user lifecycle: sign up → activate → pay → cancel
• Stripe webhooks — keeping your database in sync with payment events
• Feature gating — showing different UIs to free vs paid users
• Transactional emails with Resend (welcome, receipt, cancellation)

What to document:

• A flow diagram of the subscription lifecycle
• How your webhook handler works and what events you handle
• Security considerations: how you validate that webhooks come from Stripe
• What you would do differently if building for scale

Project 4: Multi-tenant app with organisations

Complexity: Intermediate–Advanced · Time: 3–4 weekends

Stack: Next.js + Supabase + Clerk + Stripe + Vercel

Multi-tenancy means multiple organisations can use your app, with their own data, their own members, and their own billing. This is how most B2B SaaS products actually work — and building it teaches you the architectural thinking that separates junior from senior engineers.

A good project idea: a simple project management tool (boards and cards), a shared bookmark manager, or a team changelog tool. The product itself matters less than the multi-tenant architecture.

What this teaches you:

• Clerk's organisations feature for managing teams
• Database design for multi-tenancy (every row scoped to an org)
• Per-seat pricing or per-organisation billing with Stripe
• Invitation flows for adding team members
• Role-based access control (admin vs member permissions)

What to document:

• Your database schema and how tenancy is enforced
• The data isolation strategy — how you guarantee organisation A can never see organisation B's data
• Your approach to billing: per-seat vs flat-rate and why you chose it

Project 5: AI agent with memory and tools

Complexity: Advanced · Time: 4+ weekends

Stack: Next.js + Supabase (pgvector) + Claude/OpenAI + Vercel + Trigger.dev

This is where vibe coding meets agentic engineering. Build an AI agent that has persistent memory (it remembers previous conversations), can take actions (browse the web, send emails, update a database), and runs tasks asynchronously in the background.

A focused project idea: a personal research assistant that accepts a topic, searches the web, summarises what it finds, stores the summary in your knowledge base with vector embeddings for semantic search, and emails you a digest. All triggered by a natural language command.

What this teaches you:

• Vector embeddings and semantic search with pgvector in Supabase
• Tool use — giving AI models the ability to call APIs
• Long-running background jobs with Trigger.dev
• Streaming multi-step agent workflows to the frontend
• Prompt design for reliable, consistent agent behaviour

What to document:

• The agent architecture — what decisions does the agent make vs what's hardcoded
• Your prompting strategy and how you prevent hallucinations
• Performance: how long tasks take, cost per run, reliability
• Failure cases: what happens when a tool fails, how you handle errors

How to document your AI workflow (this is the key)

Here's what most vibe coding portfolio guides miss: the documentation of your process matters as much as the finished project. Companies aren't just hiring you for what you built — they're hiring you for how you think.

For each project, create a README.md that includes:

• Architecture overview — a diagram or written explanation of what each service does. Show that you understand the system, not just that you used it.
• AI workflow — how you used AI tools. Which prompts were most useful? Where did the AI need the most guidance? What did you have to correct? This transparency builds massive trust with hiring managers who know how AI tools actually work.
• Trade-off decisions — why did you choose Supabase Auth over Clerk? Why Resend over SendGrid? These small decisions reveal architectural thinking.
• What you'd do differently — every honest engineer has at least one thing they'd change about a project in hindsight. Naming it shows maturity.

Show your work with Loom

For each project, record a 3–5 minute Loom video walking through the product and the code. This does two things: it proves the thing actually works, and it demonstrates your communication skills — which remote companies value enormously.

In the video, walk through:

1. The live product (show it working end-to-end)
2. The key architectural decisions (pull up the code and explain)
3. One thing that was hard and how you solved it

Keep it concise. Three minutes of clear, confident explanation beats ten minutes of rambling. Practice it once before recording.

Where to put your portfolio

The simplest approach: GitHub for your code, a personal site for your portfolio page. Your personal site can be built with the same tools you just learned — Next.js deployed to Vercel. Meta: show your portfolio using the skills your portfolio demonstrates.

Include these links prominently in every job application:

• GitHub profile with pinned repositories
• Live URLs for each project (not just code — the deployed app)
• Loom videos embedded in each project README

When you're ready to apply, start with the jobs that match your skill level. Browse vibe coding jobs filtered by experience level. Many early-stage companies value demonstrated ability over years of experience.

Ready to accelerate your progress? The next guide gives you a structured 30-day plan to go from these early projects to job-ready: The 30-Day Vibe Coding Challenge.