What People Build With AI: 1,087 VCL Projects
Productivity leads VCL’s recorded project categories, followed by games. A look at 1,087 public listings, with overlapping categories and a fixed cutoff.
Productivity was the most commonly recorded category in VCL’s September 2026 snapshot: 422 of 1,087 projects with category data, or 38.8%. Games came second, appearing on 237 listings (21.8%).
That puts games ahead of Developer Tools and Business in this sample. The public output of AI-assisted development is not confined to software for other developers.
The eight leading categories
The report contains 1,254 approved, public projects. These percentages use the 1,087 with recorded categories; the other 167 are missing category data.
| Recorded category | Projects | Share of projects with category data |
|---|---|---|
| Productivity | 422 | 38.8% |
| Games | 237 | 21.8% |
| Developer Tools | 207 | 19.0% |
| Social | 207 | 19.0% |
| Business | 191 | 17.6% |
| Education | 190 | 17.5% |
| Entertainment | 166 | 15.3% |
| Marketing | 138 | 12.7% |
Categories are multi-select. A productivity product may also be listed under Business or Education, so the rows are neither an exhaustive partition nor percentages that should add to 100%.
A description of products, not their success
The category mix describes what people submitted to VCL. It does not show which products attracted users, earned revenue or remained active after launch. Nor does it identify how much code AI generated: the report examines projects listed on an AI-assisted-building directory, not audited development histories.
The distinction matters when reporting on “what AI is building.” This is evidence of the types of products reaching a public directory, not a market-share estimate for all AI-built software. Private projects, internal company tools and products never submitted to VCL are outside the sample.
Productivity’s lead is clear within that boundary. Explaining *why* it leads would require evidence about builder motivations or submission patterns that this category table does not provide.
Data and source. State of Vibe Coding 2026, Dataset v7: project categories, cutoff September 11, 2026 at 09:40:56 UTC. See the edition’s methodology for inclusion rules and missing data.
The full State of Vibe Coding report also examines reported AI tools, website infrastructure, search visibility and public-page performance.