Can Miro be vibe coded?

Build brief — a focused alternative to Miro

**Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 53/100 · **Category:** Whiteboard

**Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/miro

Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Miro. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

Context

**Miro** — Online collaborative whiteboard for diagrams, workshops, and planning. It currently costs $10/mo.

A simple multiplayer whiteboard is doable; Miro's value is scale, templates, integrations, facilitation, permissions, and reliability with many users.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Miro that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

What you are building

Build a canvas with sticky notes, shapes, connectors, comments, and optional multiplayer sync.

Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.

A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

Requirements

Functional

Canvas library.

WebSocket/collab backend.

Database.

Auth.

Hosting.

Optional template library.

Non-functional

Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.

Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.

Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.

Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

Implementation brief

Build me a personal whiteboard app to replace Miro. Requirements:

Do not write a canvas engine from scratch: build on the tldraw SDK (React +

Vite). It already does shapes, sticky notes, connectors, and selection well.

A local web app on localhost:4900 with a board picker: named boards with

thumbnails, create, rename, delete.

Each board autosaves its tldraw snapshot JSON to SQLite (better-sqlite3 behind a

small Express API) 2 seconds after the last change, keeping the previous 20

snapshots as undo insurance.

A toolbar button exports the current board as PNG and SVG to

~/Whiteboards/<board-name>.png.

A template row on the new-board screen seeded from JSON files in templates/:

retro grid, brainstorm columns, weekly plan.

Works fully offline, binds to localhost, no accounts, no telemetry.

Optional: share-with-one-person mode over my private network using tldraw's sync

package, two cursors max. Skip it if the sync setup starts to sprawl.

Out of scope: workshop facilitation tools (timers, voting), integrations, and

performance tuning for 50-person boards. This is my thinking canvas, not a venue.

README: dev and build commands, and where board data lives on disk.

Delivery standard

Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.

Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.

Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.

Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.

Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.

Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.

Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.

Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

Acceptance criteria

A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.

The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.

Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.

The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.

Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.

No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

Large-board performance.

Templates.

Integrations.

Facilitation tools.

Permissions, presence, and shared workflows are difficult to simplify.

The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.

What you still own after launch

Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.

Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.

Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

Maintain every third-party integration as APIs and OAuth rules change.

Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

[tldraw](https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw) — Open-source canvas/whiteboard SDK and app; excellent prior art for DIY whiteboards

Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/miro