Last weekend, I fed Codex my browser history and said “explore.” It found a pattern I call rabbit holes – three ways we browse:
- Linear spiral - one page > next page > next. E.g. filing income tax, clicking “next” on the PyCon schedule.
- Hub & spoke - hub > open tabs > back to hub. E.g. exploring DHH’s Ubuntu setup, checking Firebase config.
- Wide survey - source > many, many pages. E.g. clearing inbox, scanning news.
Then Claude Code built this lovely data story.
My goal? Find challenges in vibe-coding interesting data stories. I found several.
A. I don’t know what I want.
Solution? Ask for multiple options. More options = more ideas. Codex proposed two I hadn’t planned: rabbit holes and search funnels.
B. I don’t know if it’ll turn out well.
Solution? Build them all. Don’t pre-judge. I did not expect rabbit holes to be interesting - a clear prediction error.
C. Reviewing is the bottleneck. It’s slow and painful.
Solution? Make reviews easy.
- Ask for review-friendly output. E.g. A table/heatmap comparing options.
- Use LLMs to pre-review. E.g. Pick top 3 with reasons.
- Review output, not code. E.g. Have it build a working demo, then review.
D. Model / tool strengths vary.
Solution? Align with strengths. For example:
- Use GPT-5 for planning. It’s better than GPT-5-Codex or Claude 4.5 Sonnet.
- Code UI with Claude 4.5 Sonnet. It’s better than most models.
Check out the prompts & process.
Try this: Pick one messy dataset you have. Ask an LLM for five ways to explore it. Build them all. One will surprise you.