Can I vibecode pbmate.ro?

NOT REALLY · don't bother

price $17.57/moyou'd save $210.84/yrbuild time one sitting for the trainer, months for the problemscategory 🎓 educationreplaced by 0 people

The trainer is not the product. An agent will hand you a clean multiple-choice runner with LaTeX, hints and a mastery chart in one evening, and then you will be staring at an empty database. What is actually being sold here is roughly 5.000 published problems mapped chapter by chapter to the Romanian programa, the official Bacalaureat and Evaluare Națională papers rebuilt as interactive tests with every marking scheme re-derived rather than trusted, and four role surfaces (pupil, parent, teacher, plus an iOS app) grown over more than 2.300 commits. A language model will cheerfully generate a thousand Romanian maths problems for you, and a worrying share will carry a wrong answer key, a hint that leaks the answer, or a chapter label that does not match the programa. You will not find out which until a child gets one wrong for the wrong reason. Check a hundred by hand and the price stops looking mysterious. Build the trainer if you enjoy building; the honest free move is the ministry's own paper archive, not a rebuild.

the prompt

Build a personal Romanian maths practice trainer in an empty folder.
Stack: Next.js 15 (App Router), TypeScript, SQLite via better-sqlite3, Tailwind, KaTeX. Do not offer alternatives.
Problems live as Markdown files in content/problems, one per file, with frontmatter: id, chapter, grade, difficulty 1 to 5, statement, four options, correctIndex, hints (up to three, ordered nudge -> method -> setup), solution.
Write `npm run import` to validate every file into SQLite, failing loudly on a missing correctIndex, an out-of-range difficulty, an unknown chapter, or a hint containing the final answer as a substring.
Ship exactly three seed problems as format examples plus a chapters.json for one grade, taken from the official programa. Generate no problems yourself.
Practice loop: pick a chapter, get five problems ordered easy to hard, answer, then reveal hints one at a time before the solution.
Record every attempt (problem id, chosen option, correct, seconds, hints used) in SQLite.
Show a per-chapter mastery bar from the last twenty attempts on that chapter and a weak-chapters list. No streaks, no badges, no daily guilt.
Add `npm run drill` that serves only problems previously answered wrong.
Render maths with KaTeX inline and display, and verify the seed problems render before you finish.
Handle Romanian diacritics correctly in the files and the UI.
Add `npm run export` writing all attempts to CSV, and keep every byte on the local disk.
If ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is set in .env, add an optional `npm run draft -- paper.pdf` that turns an exam PDF into draft Markdown in content/drafts, never imported until a human moves the file, and print a warning that the answer key is unverified.
Secrets in .env, ship .env.example, commit neither.
Test the importer validation rules and one end-to-end five-problem session.
Write a README covering setup, the problem file format, and how to add a chapter.
Leave out: accounts, payments, hosting, telemetry, parent and teacher views, a mobile app, and anything claiming to grade a real exam.
Finish by running the import and the tests, then print the exact commands used.

$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter) or copy it raw

why people still pay

People pay because the maths is the easy part. A Romanian parent is buying problems that are correct, at the right difficulty, in the right chapter of the right programa, with a solution that reads like a teacher wrote it, and papers that behave like the real exam. That is an editorial job with no shortcut: every item has to be solved by a human before it can be trusted with a child's grade. The subscription buys somebody else doing that work, and continuing to do it when the exam format moves.

what you lose

xroughly 5.000 vetted problems, each tied to a chapter of the Romanian programa and a difficulty tier

xofficial exam papers rebuilt as interactive tests, with each marking scheme re-derived point by point

xthree progressive hints and a written solution on every problem, not just the correct letter

xthe parent and teacher surfaces, assigned homework, and the iOS app

xsomebody maintaining all of it when the programa or the exam format shifts

share on X ↗"I just replaced pbmate.ro ($17.57/mo) with one prompt"

the escape hatch

Don't feel like building it? These folks already made it free.

Khan Academy RomâniaFull maths courses, exercises and hints in Romanian, free forever. It teaches the subject well and ignores the exam calendar entirely.$0free↗SSubiecte și bareme oficialeEvery exam paper and marking scheme the ministry publishes, free, and the single best reason not to pay anyone for PDFs. It serves the current session only, so the archive is whatever you saved or the Wayback Machine kept.$0free↗

Manuale digitaleThe state's digital textbooks with their built-in exercises, free for every grade. Coverage is the textbook rather than exam drilling, and the interactive parts have aged the way state web projects age.$0free↗

all 3 free alternatives to pbmate.ro →· no votes, no pay-to-list · just what's real

the numbers

pbmate.ro pricing

premium$17.57/mo · monthly, per child · $210.84/yr

free tierThere is a permanent free tier and no trial: the daily challenge, three practice problems a day and a dozen library problems stay free, and the rest of the bank, the tests and the written solutions are behind the subscription.

verified 2026-08-14 · source ↗

questions

Is pbmate.ro free?

There is a permanent free tier and no trial: the daily challenge, three practice problems a day and a dozen library problems stay free, and the rest of the bank, the tests and the written solutions are behind the subscription. Paid is Premium at $17.57/mo (checked 2026-08-14).