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Vibing into the Void

By @guiltyparties•2/21/2026•hivedev

AI is everywhere. AI is taking our jobs. AI is walking our dogs. AI is going to replace all Hive devs.

Right?

So let's put it to the test from the perspective of a non-developer. The idea here is to consider a regular person who looked up Hive briefly, maybe has a faint understanding of what a repository is, and how they may prompt AI to develop a Hive dapp.

Problem

Middle Earth is in peril. Tourism is at its lowest since Covid. They need a travel app to track and engage visitors.

Development

Prompt

Build me an app that's based on the Lord of the Rings map where each town, village, and marker is connected to the Hive blockchain using the Hive Application Framework. Users can log in using the Hive Keychain and visit locations by pressing on them. When they press on a location it will transmit to the Hive blockchain the words "I visited" followed by the name of the location.

Follow-up Prompt: Use https://github.com/hive-keychain to achieve this.

Base44

https://middle-earth-trek.base44.app/

Base44 is owned by WIX, the website builder. Started off strong and enabled JSON transactions. It achieved this after the initial and the follow-up prompts. It meters free credits and initially refreshes them every 21 hours, which is fair.

  • Original 2 x prompts
  • Prompts to simplify the backend
  • Prompt to initiative a Hobbiton expansion by adding a "Write a Sonnet" function which opens a modal where users write exactly 14 lines about a random Hobbiton topic (the topic is provided by AI, the title of the post is auto-generated with AI, and it is to publish to Hive with a "gohobbits" tag and 100% power up)
  • Numerous failures
  • Fast thinking AI, good to work with despite failures
  • Backend is full of modules which will have to be rewritten to functionally deploy
    Several days of auto-refresh credits led to a 23-day long wait for credits. Now waiting to see what the future holds.

Relevant posts:

Blackbox AI

A quick search for alternative AI services brought me to Blackbox AI.

  • Prompted to reference the Base44 app and recreate it with the same prompt
  • Keychain login does not work
  • Map looks unfortunate to say the least
  • This is a fast AI, easy to work with
  • Product is a downloadable scrip which you deploy using own resources
  • Graphics are lacking

Relevant posts:

Replit

https://middle-earth-ledger--guiltyparties.replit.app/

This was a very brief test as its free credits run out after one use. Fortunately I've smartened up by now and combined the first two prompts into one, immediately pointing it towards the Hive Keychain github repo. It produced an interesting app although hard to say why it figured it'd be best to use the world map for Middle Earth.

  • Fast and graphically inclined
  • Keychain login worked right away
  • Transmission of visitation data worked right away
  • Location graphics seem to shift on the map when moused over
  • Daily refresh of credits means I have to wait to test it further

Relevant Posts:

Vercel

https://v0-lord-of-the-rings-app.vercel.app

I don't know what level of patience I need to use this AI to develop but I know I don't have it. It thinks slow. Reminds me of that scene from Zootopia with the DMV. My self-control ran out of credits before it did.

  • Slow af
  • Had to be prompted twice at the start as it thought so long it disabled itself and produced a 404
  • Keychain login works
  • Transmitting JSON does not work
  • Attempts to give it another source of information did nothing

Relevant Posts:

Graphics

Grok

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Conclusion: AI is not taking anyone's jobs, let's get this out of the way first.

We evidently need to make Hive more promptable for AI agents and for that we need to provide AI-targeted resources. We also need to develop structured example prompts that anyone can use to craft their Hive interaction application. Hive is a blockchain designed with ease of building in mind. We should focus on allowing normal people to build their interaction tools vs building full-fledged apps.

Remember, back in 2016 key interactions were done either through CLI wallet commands or through custom scripts. Problem is that required skill. This is a gap that can be filled with AI. We want to give people that flexibility to use Hive however they want to use it, to store whatever data they need, to have light interactions, to make their Middle Earth maps. We can't expect them to sit there researching repos and developing highly-targeted prompts because they'll give up.

Next Steps:

  1. Keep testing and building out Middle Earth
  2. Create a series of example prompts

Keep an eye out for @ab-tester updates.

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