I Have 19 Unfinished GitHub Repositories. Here’s Why That’s the Point.

I opened my GitHub profile today and counted.

Nineteen repositories. coupon-generator. task_app. kan. portfolio. Names that mean nothing to anyone but me, and honestly, sometimes not even to me.

None of them are finished. Most of them don’t do much. A few are just folders with one HTML file inside.

And yet, I push to GitHub almost every day.

What Vibe Coding Actually Means for Someone Like Me

I don’t have a computer science degree. I don’t have a job. I live in rural Shimane Prefecture, Japan — one of the least populated places in the country — and I spend most of my time indoors.

Two years ago, I couldn’t get out of bed.

What changed wasn’t a breakthrough or a moment of inspiration. What changed was that AI tools got good enough that I could describe something in plain language and watch it become code. That’s Vibe Coding. You feel your way toward something. You don’t engineer it.

The gap between “I have an idea” and “this thing exists” collapsed.

For someone with depression and no professional coding background, that collapse is everything.

The App I’m Building: 観 (Kan)

One of those 19 repositories is called 観 — the Japanese character for “observation” or “contemplation.”

It’s a mental health tool built on two frameworks that, the more I studied them, seemed to be saying the same thing from different directions.

The first is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The idea that thoughts are not facts. That you can observe a thought, record it, and slowly change the pattern. Structured. Clinical. Effective.

The second is Buddhist philosophy — specifically the concept of 正念 (sati), or mindfulness. The practice of observing the present moment without judgment. No fixing. No analyzing. Just watching.

CBT says: record your thoughts and restructure them. Buddhism says: observe your thoughts and let them pass.

Both are pointing at the same underlying truth: you are not your thoughts. You can watch them.

I built 観 around three tabs.

観 (Today) — Behavioral activation meets present-moment awareness. What is happening right now?

波 (Wave) — The wave is impermanent. Record the emotional spike. Watch it move. This is where CBT’s thought records meet Buddhism’s concept of impermanence (無常).

識 (Insight) — Vijñāna in Sanskrit. The observing consciousness. Where patterns become visible.

Right now, the app is mostly a shell. Open it and you see three kanji characters floating on a screen.

That’s it.

Why I’m Building It Anyway

I’m not building 観 because I know what it will become. I’m building it because I need it.

When I was at my worst, I tried every mental health app I could find. They either felt like medical forms or like mobile games with anxiety-reduction skins. Neither felt honest.

What I wanted was something that understood two things simultaneously: that the mind can be observed systematically, and that it cannot be fully controlled. CBT gave me tools. Buddhism gave me permission to stop fighting.

I want to know if that combination helps other people the way it helped me.

So the MVP is simple. A mood score from 1 to 10. One line of text about today. That’s it.

The data I want to collect: do people keep coming back? And when they do, does the number move?

The Real Reason I Push to GitHub Every Day

Here’s what those 19 unfinished repositories actually are.

They’re proof that I moved.

Two years ago, I couldn’t finish anything. The fear of an incomplete outcome was bigger than the pull of starting. I’d open a blank document and close it. Open a code editor and close it.

Now I build things I don’t fully understand, push them to a public repository, and move on. The completion rate is low. The momentum is real.

In behavioral psychology, this is called behavioral activation — the idea that action precedes motivation, not the other way around. You don’t wait to feel ready. You do the small thing, and the feeling follows.

Nineteen repositories is nineteen instances of doing the small thing.

What I’m Trying to Figure Out

I’m not a developer. I’m not a therapist. I’m someone who got sick, got quiet, and started paying attention.

The attention led to questions. The questions led to books. The books led to code.

I don’t know if 観 will work. I don’t know if Vibe Coding is a real career path or a temporary window before AI closes it. I don’t know if any of this will generate the income I need.

What I know is that building things — even broken, half-finished things — is the only practice that has consistently made the day feel worth it.

That might be the most honest thing I’ve written.

観 is currently in early design. If you’re curious, the shell is live at https://johnpascualkumar077.github.io/kan/

I write about AI tools, behavioral psychology, and building things from rural Japan on note.com (Japanese) and here on Medium (English).