# How to Vibe Code Your Own Opinion Stage (and Stop Paying for It)

> Quizzes, Polls & Surveys that Get More Responses

- Site: https://opinionstage.com
- Category: SaaS & Form Builders
- Platforms: Web app
- Verdict: **Solid side project** (75/100 vibecodeable)
- Estimated effort: 2-3 weekends

## Verdict

Build a personal-use subset of Opinion Stage in a few weekends, but keep paying if you rely on their 15-year SEO footprint and 100+ native marketing integrations.

A solo developer with AI coding tools can easily spin up the core CRUD builders, result reporting dashboards, and an AI quiz generator. The real engineering hurdles are architecting a clean recursive evaluation engine for conditional branching rules and packaging the quiz player into a robust, isolated embeddable JavaScript widget that won't break client websites. For personal or internal team use, building this is straightforward; replacing an enterprise marketing platform with an extensive third-party integration web is a waste of time.

### What you can't replicate

- 15 years of domain authority and organic search traffic
- Pre-built native integrations with hundreds of marketing platforms and CRMs
- Massive pre-existing public template library

## What it does

An interactive content and lead-generation SaaS platform for building, customizing, and embedding quizzes, polls, surveys, forms, assessments, and calculators.

### Core features

- No-code drag-and-drop/step builder for quizzes, polls, surveys, and calculators
- AI-assisted content generator using LLM APIs to draft questions
- Conditional branching and skip logic rules engine
- Built-in lead capture form step before showing results
- Embeddable lightweight JavaScript widget/iframe for third-party sites
- Response reporting dashboard and CSV data exports
- Webhook and basic third-party notification integrations

## The business

### Pricing

- Free: $0/mo
- Pro: $32/mo
- Business: $99/mo
- Enterprise: Custom

Founded 2011.
Team size: 10-50.

## The hard parts

- Designing a robust client-side rule evaluation engine for complex conditional branching and skip paths
- Building a lightweight embeddable widget script that loads cleanly without CSS pollution or layout shift on host sites
- Managing multi-step form state persistence across dynamic branches and lead capture gates
- Architecting flexible schema storage in SQLite/Postgres for heterogeneous question types and answer payloads

## How to vibe code Opinion Stage

### Prerequisites

- Node.js (free): Runtime for running Next.js and backend tooling
- GitHub (free): Source code repository and deployment pipeline integration

### Recommended AI tools

- Claude Code: Handles end-to-end scaffolding, complex rule-engine logic, and multi-file debugging from the terminal
- Cursor: Ideal for iterative UI styling, block editor polish, and widget CSS scoping

### Stack

- Frontend: Next.js with Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui
- Backend: Next.js Server Actions and Route Handlers
- Database: Turso (SQLite at the edge)
- Auth: better-auth
- Payments: None (Personal-use clone)
- Other: Vercel AI SDK, OpenAI API, Resend

### Hosting

- Cloudflare (Hosting the Next.js app and edge Turso database replica): $0-5/mo

### Build guide

1. **Scaffold Project and Database Schema** — Initialize a Next.js project with Tailwind CSS, configure better-auth, and set up Turso SQLite tables for users, quizzes, questions, answers, responses, and lead submissions.

```
Initialize a new Next.js project with App Router, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. Integrate better-auth for user authentication with email/password and session management. Set up Drizzle ORM connected to a Turso SQLite database. Create schema tables for: users, forms (storing title, type like quiz/poll/survey, theme settings, and settings JSON), questions (storing form_id, question_text, type, order, and config JSON), answers (storing question_id, text, score/value, next_question_id for branching), responses (storing form_id, respondent_session_id, completed_at, score), and leads (storing response_id, name, email, custom fields data). Write migration files and verify database connection.
```

2. **Build the Visual Form & Quiz Builder** — Create the dashboard and drag-and-drop or step-by-step block editor where creators can add questions, define answer choices, assign point values, and configure branding colors.

```
Build a dashboard page at /dashboard where authenticated users can create, edit, and delete quizzes, polls, surveys, and calculators. Create a detailed form editor interface at /dashboard/forms/[id]/edit with a sidebar to add questions (multiple choice, open text, rating, image choice), reorder questions, and configure question properties. Build state management using React Context or Zustand to handle unsaved changes, auto-saving drafts via Server Actions, and a theme customization panel (colors, fonts, logo upload url) that updates a preview pane live.
```

3. **Implement Conditional Logic and Branching Engine** — Develop the rule evaluation engine that dynamically routes respondents to subsequent questions or specific outcome screens based on their selected answers.

```
Extend the question editor and database schema to support conditional branching logic. For each question and answer option, allow configuring a rule: 'If answer matches X, skip to question Y or show specific outcome result'. Implement a client-side execution engine within the public quiz player component that evaluates these rules in real time as the user progresses through the questionnaire, tracking the navigation history stack to allow proper back-button behavior without breaking branch states.
```

4. **Build the Public Quiz Player and Embeddable Widget** — Create a responsive public-facing runner view for answering quizzes, complete with transition animations, lead-capture forms before results, and an embed script snippet.

```
Build a public-facing execution route at /play/[id] that renders the quiz cleanly for respondents, supporting mobile and desktop layouts. Implement step-by-step navigation, progress bars, score calculations, and an optional lead-capture gate screen right before displaying the final results/outcome. Additionally, build an embed endpoint /embed/[id] and generate a lightweight embeddable JavaScript snippet (using a script tag that injects a responsive iframe or shadow DOM container) so users can paste the quiz onto any external website without CSS collision bugs.
```

5. **Add AI Quiz Generation and Analytics Dashboard** — Integrate the Vercel AI SDK and OpenAI API to auto-generate quiz questions from prompts, and build response reporting charts and CSV exports.

```
Integrate the Vercel AI SDK and OpenAI API into the dashboard to add an 'AI Generator' modal. When a user enters a topic and question count, call OpenAI to generate structured JSON containing questions, options, and correct answers, then automatically populate the form builder. Build a response analytics reporting page at /dashboard/forms/[id]/analytics displaying total views, completion rate charts, lead conversion metrics, individual response logs, and a button to export all response data as a CSV file.
```

### Cost vs paying

**Starting costs (one-time):**

- AI coding tool subscription: $20
- Total: ~$20 one-time

**Ongoing costs (monthly):**

- Cloudflare & Turso hosting: $0
- OpenAI API usage for AI quiz generation: ~$2/mo
- Total: ~$2/mo

- Paying for the SaaS instead: $32/mo (Pro Plan)
- Build time: 16-24 hours
- AI tool credits: $20 (Claude Pro / Cursor)
- Break-even: 1 month vs Pro plan

## Sources

- [Opinion Stage Official Website](https://opinionstage.com)