Can Simple Analytics be vibe coded?
Privacy-first website analytics without cookies or personal tracking
Pageview analytics, events, dashboards, and exports are very buildable; paid value is hosted privacy posture, reports, reliability, and support.
Jump to the build brief ↓Checked Jul 2026
What you pay today, before any DIY hosting
high editorial confidence
Buildability by layer
Screens, forms, and focused interactions
The repeatable job the product performs
Availability and legality of required data
Uptime, queues, support, and maintenance
Security, compliance, and user confidence
The achievable core
- Add JS tracker, record anonymous pageviews/events, aggregate by dimensions, and expose dashboard/API.
- Ingest a known data source, calculate a focused metric set, and render a useful dashboard.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.
The parts a prompt cannot buy
- managed hosting
- privacy/legal positioning
- bot filtering
- reports
- Compliance, licensing, and legal accountability are core features.
- Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.
Why people still pay
They pay for low-maintenance analytics they can put in a privacy policy with confidence.
Compliance, licensing, and legal accountability are core features.
Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.
The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.
The brief
Context, requirements, acceptance criteria, non-goals, and the full production standard — as Markdown, ready for any coding agent.
Build brief — a focused alternative to Simple Analytics
Context
**Simple Analytics** — Privacy-first website analytics without cookies or personal tracking. It currently costs $20/mo.
Pageview analytics, events, dashboards, and exports are very buildable; paid value is hosted privacy posture, reports, reliability, and support.
This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Simple Analytics 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
Add JS tracker, record anonymous pageviews/events, aggregate by dimensions, and expose dashboard/API.
Ingest a known data source, calculate a focused metric set, and render a useful dashboard.
A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.
Requirements
Functional
Server.
Database.
Tracker script.
Domain/SSL.
Backups.
Optional email reports.
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 privacy-first web analytics to replace Simple Analytics, self-hosted for my own
sites. Requirements:
A Node + Express service with better-sqlite3: one /collect endpoint and a dashboard at
/dash behind basic auth (password in .env).
A tracker snippet under 1 KB of plain JS, no cookies: sends path, referrer, screen
width, and a daily-salted hash of IP + user agent for unique counting; the salt
rotates daily so nothing is traceable across days.
Keep raw hits 30 days; a nightly node-cron job aggregates into daily rollups per site
(pageviews, uniques, top pages, top referrers, device split), keeps rollups forever,
deletes expired raw hits.
Custom events via sa('signup') in the snippet, counted per day.
Dashboard per site: a 30-day chart (hand-rolled SVG, no chart library), pages and
referrers tables, a date-range picker.
Filter obvious bots by user-agent list; ignore my own visits via a localStorage opt-
out flag.
CSV export per site and month from the dashboard.
No cookies and no personal data stored, GDPR-sane by construction.
Out of scope: funnels, session replay, and multi-user access. Uptime is on me; the
collect endpoint sits behind my existing reverse proxy.
README: the snippet to paste and the Caddy or nginx route.
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:
Managed hosting.
Privacy/legal positioning.
Bot filtering.
Reports.
Compliance, licensing, and legal accountability are core features.
Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.
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.
Risk
**High consequence.** Use this as a prototype or personal aid. Keep a qualified human and an established provider in the loop for consequential decisions.
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:
[Umami](https://github.com/umami-software/umami) — Open-source web analytics platform for privacy-friendly tracking
Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/simple-analytics
You still own the product
- 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.
Open-source prior art
Before you start
Can Simple Analytics be vibe coded?
Yes, for personal use. Pageview analytics, events, dashboards, and exports are very buildable; paid value is hosted privacy posture, reports, reliability, and support.
What can an AI coding agent reproduce from Simple Analytics?
Add JS tracker, record anonymous pageviews/events, aggregate by dimensions, and expose dashboard/API. Ingest a known data source, calculate a focused metric set, and render a useful dashboard. A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.
What will a DIY Simple Analytics replacement still be missing?
managed hosting; privacy/legal positioning; bot filtering; reports; Compliance, licensing, and legal accountability are core features.; Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.
What do I still own after building a Simple Analytics alternative?
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.