A District Expects to Save $200K From AI-Powered ‘Vibe Coding.’ Here’s How

Source Domain: www.edweek.org

Teachers in Washington state’s Peninsula school district seeking critical feedback on their instruction have a new tool to turn to: LessonLens.

A biology teacher can film a lesson on DNA and upload it to the artificial intelligence platform. They may find out they did a great job giving their students precise directions on complex tasks but could have provided more time for the class to think over a complicated question before stepping in with the answer.

You won’t find LessonLens in any app store or meet its representatives on the showroom floor at an education technology conference.

That’s because Peninsula’s tech leaders created the tool themselves, using Claude Code, a widely available AI coding application. (Competitors include: Codez, Cursor, Replit, and Loveable).

The strategy—sometimes called “vibe coding”—mirrors how some of the biggest players in Silicon Valley write code these days. Rather than write it themselves, they use AI to generate it. In fact, engineers at Anthropic, the company behind Claude, use the tool for 60% of their work.

Vibe coding allows Peninsula to create digital tools that cost less than what’s commercially available, are more tailored to the district’s needs, or both.

Problems that would have been too pricey to fix in the past now “cost us an hour of having a coding agent write something out and test it,” said James Cantonwine, the district’s director of research and assessment. “And then away we go.”

Beyond LessonLens, Peninsula has vibe-coded tools to help with accounting, human resources, and other basic operations.

For instance, Kris Hagel, the district’s chief information officer, adapted an open-source electronic signature tool and used AI coding to customize it. He believes this bespoke version can replace the district’s subscription to a widely used product.

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