Can a non-developer really build a working app with AI?
Short answer
Yes for a genuinely useful class of things — internal tools, landing pages, simple SaaS products, scripts that automate a manual process. The wall is not writing the code, it is everything around it: deciding what to build, knowing when the output is subtly wrong, deploying it, keeping it secure, and fixing it when it breaks at an inconvenient moment. Those are judgement problems and AI helps with them much less than it helps with typing.
The longer version
For a real and useful class of things, yes. Internal tools, landing pages, straightforward SaaS products, scripts that automate something you currently do by hand — these are genuinely within reach of someone who cannot write the code themselves, and that was not true a couple of years ago.
The wall is not the code. It is everything around it: deciding what to build in the first place, noticing when the output is subtly wrong rather than obviously broken, getting it deployed, keeping it secure, and fixing it at eleven o'clock at night when it breaks in a way the tool did not anticipate. Those are judgement problems, and AI helps with judgement far less than it helps with typing.
The subtle-wrongness one deserves particular attention, because it is the failure mode that catches non-developers hardest. Code that runs and produces plausible output is not the same as code that is correct, and without the experience to smell the difference you can ship something that quietly does the wrong thing for months.
The honest summary: you can get much further than you expect, and the last ten percent is where you will need someone who knows what they are doing.
The full argument, with the rest of the picture around it:
Vibe Coding Killed the Idea Backlog. Now Everyone Has the Same Problem