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

> Knowledge Base & Wiki Software

- Site: https://slab.com
- Category: Web app
- Verdict: **Solid side project** (68/100 vibecodeable)
- Estimated effort: 2-3 weeks part-time

## Verdict

Build a personal documentation wiki with markdown editing and basic vector search, but bypass the complex multi-app OAuth sync pipelines and realtime multiplayer CRDT infrastructure.

Creating a clean documentation repository with markdown topics, folder trees, and an AI assistant is entirely feasible as a solid side project using modern web frameworks. However, replicating Slab's exact multi-app unified search engine—which indexes live data streams from Slack, GitHub, and Google Drive while maintaining strict permission boundaries—involves immense maintenance friction for a solo builder. Furthermore, implementing robust realtime cursor co-editing without dedicated infrastructure libraries will eat up your weekends debugging race conditions.

### What you can't replicate

- Unified OAuth ingestion sync across Slack, GitHub, and Google Drive
- Enterprise SOC 2 compliance and rigorous SAML/SCIM directory provisioning

## What it does

Team documentation, internal communication, and knowledge management software featuring a collaborative editor, structured content topics, verification workflows, and unified search across external tools.

### Core features

- Rich-text markdown post editor
- Hierarchical folder and Topic content organization
- Verification workflows for stale document flagging
- Unified search indexing database content
- Realtime collaborative multi-user editing
- Team member access control and permissions

## The business

### Pricing

- Free: $0 — For small teams up to 10 users.
- Startup: $6.67/mo — For growing teams needing more history and privacy.
- Business: $12.50/mo — For mature teams requiring advanced AI and integrations.

### Funding

$2.2M raised.
- Seed
Investors: CRV, Matrix Partners, NEA, National Electronic Attachment Inc.

Founded 2017.
Team size: 10-50.

## The hard parts

- Realtime multiplayer text editing via CRDTs or operational transformation at scale
- Multi-source ingestion pipelines and permission-aware RAG vector search across third-party tools
- Granular permission maps securing nested topic structures against LLM context leaks

## How to vibe code Slab

### Prerequisites

- Node.js (free): Required runtime for modern full-stack TypeScript frameworks.
- GitHub (free): Source code repository and deployment hook origin.
- Anthropic API Key (Pay-as-you-go): Powers document summarization and AI Ask capabilities.

### Recommended AI tools

- Claude Code: Best-in-class terminal coding agent for scaffolding multi-file React apps and debugging backend routes.
- Cursor: AI-native code editor ideal for fine-tuning UI component states and rich text editor extensions.

### Stack

- Frontend: Next.js
- Backend: Next.js API Routes
- Database: Neon
- Auth: better-auth
- Payments: None (Personal use)
- Other: Vercel AI SDK, TipTap Editor, Resend

### Hosting

- Vercel (Hosting the Next.js frontend and serverless API endpoints.): $0-20/mo
- Neon (Serverless Postgres database storing posts, topics, and vector embeddings.): $0/mo

### Build guide

1. **Project Scaffolding and Database Schema** — Initialize a Next.js project with Tailwind CSS, configure Drizzle ORM connected to Neon Postgres, and define the core relational models for users, teams, topics, posts, and document versions.

```
Create a new Next.js project using App Router and TypeScript. Install Drizzle ORM and configure it to connect to a Neon serverless Postgres database using the connection string from environment variables. Define database schemas in `db/schema.ts` for: `users` (id, email, name, avatar), `teams` (id, name, slug), `topics` (id, team_id, name, description, parent_id), `posts` (id, topic_id, author_id, title, content, status, version, updated_at), and `post_history` (id, post_id, content, edited_by, timestamp). Run migrations and ensure a clean project layout.
```

2. **Authentication System** — Integrate better-auth for secure credential and Google OAuth login, attaching user sessions to organizational workspaces.

```
Install and configure `better-auth` in the Next.js application to handle user authentication with email/password and Google OAuth providers. Create the required database tables via better-auth schema extensions. Build a sign-in and sign-up page under `app/(auth)/` with validation states. Set up session middleware protecting dashboard routes and ensure user records link cleanly to team workspaces.
```

3. **Topic and Folder Tree Navigation** — Implement a sidebar navigation tree supporting nested Topics, folders, and privacy markers for internal knowledge categorization.

```
Build a responsive sidebar component for the application dashboard that renders hierarchical Topics and folders fetched from the database. Implement server actions to create, rename, and delete topics and nested folders. Add UI indicators for private topics and pin your favorite topics to the top of the tree view. Ensure optimistic updates update the sidebar immediately upon action execution.
```

4. **Rich Text Document Editor** — Integrate a modern headless markdown or rich-text editor (such as TipTap) with autosave capabilities and document version history logging.

```
Create the post editor view at `app/posts/[postId]/page.tsx` utilizing an open-source rich text editor library like TipTap or a robust markdown textarea wrapper with toolbar formatting (headings, lists, code blocks, callouts). Implement a debounced autosave server action that persists post title and content changes to the database every 2 seconds. Add a version history drawer that displays past revisions saved in the `post_history` table and allows restoring previous versions.
```

5. **Verification Workflows & Stale Content Flagging** — Add verification tracking to posts so designated maintainers can mark documentation as verified or stale after elapsed time windows.

```
Add verification attributes to posts: `verified_at` timestamp, `verifier_id`, and `verification_interval_days`. Build a status banner inside the post viewer component that alerts readers if a document is stale (exceeding its interval). Include a 'Verify' action button for designated maintainers to update the verification timestamp and log the review event. Create a dashboard widget listing stale documents across all topics.
```

6. **AI Assistant and RAG Search Integration** — Implement Vercel AI SDK to power document auto-summarization, autofix grammar corrections, and semantic Q&A over internal documentation.

```
Integrate the Vercel AI SDK (`ai` and `@ai-sdk/anthropic`) into the application. Create an API route for 'AI Ask' that accepts user queries, computes embedding matches or queries pgvector on the documents table, and streams back synthesized answers with citations referencing specific posts. Add an 'AI Autofix' button inside the editor toolbar that sends the current document content to Claude Haiku for grammar correction, clean formatting, and concise summary generation, streaming the result directly back into the editor.
```

### Cost vs paying

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

- Domain name registration: $12/yr
- Total: ~$12 one-time

**Ongoing costs (monthly):**

- Neon Database & Vercel hosting: $0/mo (Hobby)
- Anthropic API usage: ~$3/mo
- Total: ~$3/mo

- Paying for the SaaS instead: $12.50/user/mo
- Build time: 35-45 hours
- AI tool credits: $20/mo (Claude Pro)
- Break-even: N/A (Personal build)

## Sources

- [Slab Official Website](https://slab.com)
- [Slab Pricing Page](https://slab.com/pricing)
- [Slab Security Page](https://slab.com/security)