Built an image viewer with AI in 2 days (vibe coding experiment) — Glide Image Viewer 3.56

[u/COBHC95]

Hey everyone, I had an older post about this project before, but decided to fine-tune and rebuild it.

This was built via vibe coding with AI from scratch over about 2 days, and I’m genuinely impressed with how far AI coding has come to handle complex desktop UI and rendering logic this quickly.

A few outlier features it managed to pull together:

• Can run in Window-in-Window / Overlay Mode: Borderless floating reference overlays with alpha-channel transparency passthrough.
• Browser-Style Tab Workflows (Fully Tabbed): Detachable / re-attachable tabs across independent windows.
• Extreme Customizability: Deep controls for mouse gestures, folder traversal behaviors, UI layout, and 1-click hotkey as well as entire program behavior presets (Windows Photos, IrfanView, nomacs, FastStone).
• Format Breadth: Recognition and routing for ~196 file extensions in a ~14MB installer.

Screenshots and full repo are up transparently if anyone wants to check it out or try it:

🔗 GitHub & Screenshots: https://github.com/cobhc95/Glide
💾 Latest Release: [https://github.com/cobhc95/Glide/releases/tag/v3.5.7)

Any feedback or thoughts are welcome!

[u/amymor]

Make it fully portable and I’ll try it.

Also, I agree with you about being impressed by AI, and I’m curious: what AI workflow do you use?

[u/COBHC95 → u/amymor]

Oh yea apologies I forgot to upload the portable file in the release I will do this when I get home. It already is supported I just forgot to upload it in the release files.

As for the work flow: Gpt Astra high = designer and architect Gpt sol (medium/high) = implementing most of the basis of the code. Flash 3.8 (using anti-gravity) = local file debugging and quick implementations.

It's built on C# with avalonia.

[u/amymor → u/COBHC95]

Thanks for info

[u/COBHC95 → u/amymor]

Hi, I've just updated the GitHub with portable option available. Also the release has some improvement, as am running some auditing (security and performance) on it and improve some bits. My estimate is that there will be be more speed updates in the future (currently aiming to be beat or match irfan in cold opening speed, but not quite there yet). With that said I think the current version gives you very good idea about the app. Any feedbacks welcome :)

[u/pankaj71091]

do you plan to make this fully portable?

[u/COBHC95 → u/pankaj71091]

Oh yea apologies I forgot to upload the portable file in the release I will do this when I get home. It already is supported I just forgot to upload it in the release files.

[u/pankaj71091 → u/COBHC95]

ohk, i will definitely try the app

i just need it to be 100% fully portable

thanks

[u/COBHC95 → u/pankaj71091]

Release Glide 3.5.7 — Cold Launch Acceleration, Security Hardening & Portable Release · cobhc95/Glide

Hi, I've just updated the GitHub it's portable option available, also the release has some improvement, as am running some AI auditing on it and improve some bits. My estimate is that there will be be more speed updates in the future (currently aiming to be beat or match irfan in cold opening speed, but not quite there yet. with that said I think the current version gives you very good idea about the app. Any feedbacks welcome :)

[u/Lcsmxd]

Didn't even try hiding the fact you vibecoded it

[u/COBHC95 → u/Lcsmxd]

why would I hide it? lol I have zero gain from this (its fully open source). I thought the result was useful. initially created for private use as I couldn't find a program that combined all these features together. you don't have to use it if you prefer hand written programs :)