I'm not a developer. I studied business, I run operations, I spend my days talking to tour operators across Europe and the US. But in the last few months, I've built a lead generation scraper, a data enrichment tool, and internal dashboards that track our market penetration across every region we operate in.

No bootcamp. No Stack Overflow rabbit holes. Just me, Claude Code, and a clear idea of what I needed.

This is vibe coding, and if you run a tour or activity business, it's about to change how you work.

What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI assistant generate the code. You don't need to understand syntax, frameworks, or deployment pipelines. You need to understand your problem.

The term took off in early 2025, and for good reason: the barrier between "I wish I had a tool that does X" and actually having that tool has disappeared. You talk to an AI coding assistant like Claude Code, describe what you need, iterate on it, and within hours you have something that works.

It's not about replacing developers. It's about giving non-technical people the ability to solve their own problems without waiting for someone else to build it.

What I built (and why)

At CaptainBook, we needed to grow our sales pipeline. I could have asked Jerome, our CEO and the technical brain behind the platform, to build me tools. But he's busy building the actual product. So I did it myself.

A lead generation scraper. I needed a way to find tour and activity operators who aren't on our platform yet. I described the data sources, the fields I needed, and the output format. Claude Code helped me build a complete scraper that feeds leads straight into the top of our funnel.

A data enrichment tool. Raw leads are useless without context. I built a tool that takes those scraped leads and enriches them, adding contact details, social profiles, business size indicators. All custom, all tailored to our specific market.

Internal dashboards. I wanted to see where CaptainBook has presence, how market penetration looks by country and region, and where the gaps are. Now I can pull up those stats anytime, without bugging the engineering team.

None of these are production software. They're operational tools that make me better at my job, and that's the sweet spot.

How tour and activity operators can vibe code

Here's what gets me excited: if I can do this as a COO at a tech company, operators running boat tours, diving schools, or paragliding experiences can do it too.

Think about the small problems that eat your time:

• A pricing calculator that factors in season, group size, and weather conditions

• An availability checker that pulls from your booking system and formats it for your team's WhatsApp group

• A review aggregator that collects your Google, TripAdvisor, and Viator reviews into one view

• A reporting tool that shows you last month's bookings, revenue, and cancellation rate without logging into five different platforms

The key rule: your booking engine stays as the single source of truth. You're not replacing your core systems. You're building small tools around them that make your day easier.

CaptainBook's REST API lets you pull availability and booking data, push inventory updates, and integrate with whatever tools you build. You describe what you want, the AI writes the code that talks to the API, and you've got a custom tool that no off-the-shelf product could give you, because it's built for exactly how you run your business.

What to vibe code (and what not to)

This is important. Vibe coding is powerful, but it has limits.

Go ahead and vibe code:

• Internal dashboards and reports

• Data scrapers and enrichment tools

• Simple automations (auto-reply templates, notification bots)

• Calculators and planning tools

• Data formatting and export scripts

• Personal productivity tools

Don't vibe code:

• Your payment processing: use established, certified systems

• Your booking engine: that's your core infrastructure, keep it professional

• Anything handling sensitive customer data without proper security review

• Mission-critical systems where a bug means lost revenue or angry customers

The rule of thumb: if it breaks and nobody notices until Monday, it's fine to vibe code. If it breaks and customers can't book, don't.

Why CaptainBook is built for vibe coders

We didn't plan it this way, but our architecture turns out to be exactly what the vibe coding era needs.

Today: CaptainBook has a full REST API for ingesting and selling inventory. Operators (or their AI-built tools) can read availability, manage bookings, and push data in and out. Everything you vibe code can plug into the system you already use.

Coming Q2 2026: We're launching MCP integrations - Model Context Protocol - which means AI assistants will be able to plug directly into your CaptainBook data. Imagine telling Claude: "Show me my bookings for next week, flag anything that looks underbooked, and suggest a discount for the empty Wednesday afternoon slots." That's where this is heading.

The operators who start experimenting now, building small tools, getting comfortable with AI assistants, will be the ones who move fastest when these capabilities land.

Just start

I'm not going to pretend everything I built worked on the first try. Vibe coding is iterative. You describe what you want, test it, find the gap, describe it better. The AI doesn't get tired and doesn't judge your fifth revision.

You don't need to become a developer. You need to become good at describing problems. And if you run a tour or activity business, you're already doing that every day, with customers, with staff, with partners.

The tools are there. The APIs are open. The AI is ready to help. The only question is what you'll build first.