- dotstudioPro is launching the first fully AI-built streaming platform, with 90% of code written by AI
- The use of AI tools and vibe coding techniques speeds development time-to-market by 300%
- dotstudioPro merged with Bayview Entertainment and is taking a unique data-informed approach to content programming
For dotstudioPro, its newly launched free ad-supported streaming platform Chillfree TV is a total vibe.
The OTT software-as-a-service provider put its own resources to work for the debut of a new consumer-facing FAST service named Chillfree TV that is fully built using AI and an emerging developer technique called vibe coding.
In an exclusive interview, StreamTV Insider sat down with dotstudioPro’s Joe Pascual, co-founder, CEO & CTO and Phoenix Gonzalez, co-founder and chief sales advisor, to discuss the launch of its AI-powered FAST service and use of vibe coding, which delivered impressive time-to-market efficiency and cost-savings benefits.
The vendor claims Chillfree.tv represents the entertainment industry’s first fully AI-built, vibe-coded streaming network. It was developed using dotstudio’s internal API stack in collaboration with AI tools Manus, Claude 4.0 and Cursor.
According to Pascual, the initial version of Chillfree TV using traditional methods took around three months to build and cost around $80,000 of human labor. The latest iteration, which offers a bevy of enhanced user experience features and was rebuilt from scratch by Pascual using AI and vibe coding, took less than three weeks and cost single-digit $1Ks.
dotstudioPro evolves, expects Chillfree TV to compete with leading FASTs
dotstudioPro has been a streaming media provider for over 15 years, providing its flagship product that’s a video content management system coupled with an internal API to build white-label streaming apps.
Notable clients it has helped launch apps for include The Weather Channel, Byron Allen’s LocalNow FAST, and sports teams like the Minnesota Vikings. It also helps content owners and brands manage, distribute, and monetize content across AVOD, SVOD, TVOD, and FAST platforms.
To be clear, dotstudioPro doesn’t create FAST channels, where vendors like Amagi, Wurl or Frequency would be among partners rather than competitors, but instead helps power the back and front-end experiences for live and ad-monetized or subscription VOD services.
About four years ago it started investing in content distribution, building a network of pipes for clients that not only wanted to build their own apps but have channels distributed to third-party FAST and AVOD platforms like The Roku Channel or Pluto TV.
This built up what dotstudioPro calls its aggregator business, where a distribution company was installed to start procuring content and distribute for a revenue share across ad-supported platforms.
The next step in that evolution, which also ties closely to the launch of Chillfree TV, was its recent merger with Bayview Entertainment – a large distributor of independent films.
Now with expertise and access to resources around content, technology and distribution at its disposal – alongside potential from AI and vibe coding – Pascual explained the logical move was for dotstudioPro to launch a FAST platform of its own.
Initially built as a protype for customers in the streaming space, the latest version of Chillfree was meant to give the company a way to build a service and iterate on features that weren’t beholden to client requirements and an opportunity to prove out the monetization aspect that SaaS vendors must provide these days.
In that sense, Pascual said it’s treating Chillfree as a client, where the vendor has full control over features and monetization but also intends to build on bells and whistles and put marketing spend behind the new consumer-facing platform.
Expects Chillfree TV to be a revenue-generator
To be sure, the newly debuted FAST service can still serve as a proof point and example for dotstudio’s B2B clients. But with the latest rebuilt version – which also employs a data-driven programming strategy - Pascual affirmed big ambitions and expectations for Chillfree TV to be a revenue generator itself and to become a competitive standalone free streaming service, including against leading FASTs.
“It’s probably going to compete with Tubi at some point, it’s probably going to compete with all other ad-[supported] platforms,” Pascual told StreamTV Insider regarding expectations for Chillfree TV amid a crowded streaming market.
That’s no small ambition considering the Fox-owned Tubi FAST counts 97 million monthly active users and regularly appears on Nielsen’s The Gauge – including capturing 2.2% of total US TV time in June.
Still, dotstudioPro feels that it has a unique platform in Chillfree TV, underpinned by the company’s tech and boosted by its Bayview acquisition.
It believes the FAST can compete with other top ad-supported streaming platforms by offering a compelling user experience coupled with the ability to accelerate development and rapidly iterate on new features, in large part thanks to AI and vibe coding.
The rebuilt Chillfree TV launches today and will be available on the web, iOS and Android mobile devices, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Vizio, LG, and Samsung – the latter coming in Q3.
So with high expectations, let’s pull back the curtain a bit on dotstudioPro’s use of vibe coding and approach to Chillfree TV.
What is vibe coding?
New to the scene, IBM attributes the introduction of the so-called vibe coding concept to OpenAI-founder Andrej Karpathy in February 2025.
As for application in streaming, dotstudioPro believes Chillfree TV is at the forefront of using AI and vibe coding to actually build.
“In terms of really adopting AI and vibe coding, I think this platform is the first in our industry for streaming media to really take on AI to this extent and vibe code,” Gonzalez told StreamTV Insider.
So what is this seemingly magical technique of vibe coding?
Here’s how dotstudioPro defines vibe coding: “Vibe coding is a creative partnership between human instinct and AI intelligence. It’s not just AI-assisted development. It’s a real-time, collaborative process where teams and agents build together, using intuition, engagement data, and technical precision to bring platforms to life.”
Basically, the idea is for users to prompt AI (with use of Large Language Models or LLMS and AI agents) with whatever it is they want to create using plain language and have AI turn those ideas into executable code.
Part of the vibe coding concept is to accelerate development and make app building more accessible, including to those that don’t have traditional programmer or coding skills, per Google Cloud. The technique prioritizes the build itself first and refinement later, giving the “big picture” more emphasis rather than a typical line-by-line focus and manual process of writing code.
So essentially, vibe coding is a method where a person uses conversational-style prompts or simple language to have AI – rather than a human programmer or developer – write the actual code.
In the case of Chillfree, the technique was used to build code for the platform itself, as well as user experience features. So while real people are involved in the creation and ideation, AI not only evaluates, but executes commands, make changes and actually writes code for the consumer-facing platform.
“90% of the code that wrote this platform was not written by a human being, it was written by AI, using prompts, using vibe coding techniques,” Pascual told StreamTV Insider.
It’s also worth noting that the AI-written code supports a streaming video platform that’s accessible across web, mobile and CTV devices.
How dotstudioPro employs vibe coding for Chillfree
Here’s a bit more explanation in terms of how Chillfree and dotstudioPro uses the vibe coding technique, based on what Gonzalez and Pascual described and showed to StreamTV Insider with a back-end demo (for more about some of the user features created in the three-week build and the programming strategy, jump to the next sections further below).
Think of a ChatGPT-style process (although ChatGPT is not one of the tools used), where a chatbot-like AI agent receives prompts from a person – in this case Pascual - and can then write or alter code based on the desired outcome, ultimately coding the entire architecture for the Chillfree TV platform.
A difference from ChatGPT and what Chillfree uses is that the company’s AI tool is connected to the dotstudioPro repository that houses code, which is what enables the AI agent to push and pull code, evaluate it and write code. Meaning it’s not only used for the build, but to fix issues and quickly churn out or iterate on new features.
Pascual used the example of prompting the AI tools with some along the lines of: ‘On the live page on the minified video player there’s a weird icon that’s showing up next to the mute and volume button, I need that to be display none or hidden if possible’.
Then the AI gets to work evaluating code and looking for that weird button to get rid of, where Pascual or the human involved has visibility into the commands that the AI executes and code that’s written. Pascual built the entire Chillfree platform using AI and this vibe coding technique, where he likened the program Manus to his “offshore developer” in terms of its ability to fix, change and write code.
But the use of AI and vibe coding in the Chillfree TV implementation doesn’t end there.
Once written, Pascual has a code editor, where he can see the new AI-written code himself but also has a separate AI agent in place.
There, he can tell the AI agent in the code editor via additional prompts to look at what the first AI agent just did, do a code review and make sure there are no errors, feedback loops, syntax issues or what have you.
This takes it another step further and away from the need for coding or developer know-how and man hours, as once the initial code is written, the separate AI agent and system is then prompted and used to check and troubleshoot the code that was just generated by the first AI agent.
So dotstudio’s use of vibe coding employs an AI agent to write the code and a separate AI agent to check its work.
“The thinking behind this is that you kind of need another system that understands the language of the other system, so it can help you communicate with it,” Pascual noted, adding there’s a system of checks and balances.
Once the code editor AI agent does the code review, Pascual can then push it live, with that AI-generated code becoming what the user sees on the front-end.
“This is now how we are building every single streaming app that we have in dotstudioPro using this method, and all of our developers are starting to adapt it,” Pascual said.
As mentioned, dotstudio uses internal APIs but relies on third-party AI tools, specifically Manus, Claude 4.0 and Cursor. But it isn’t leaving everything to AI’s handiwork, so a human like Pascual is in the mix, alongside dotstudioPro’s own human back-end engineers - both to dream up the prompts in the first place while confirming the desired end result and to “make sure we’re not painting ourselves into a corner.”
To dotstudio, Chillfree is likely the most direct and deliberate application of vibe coding in the OTT space, where Pascual and team rebuilt an AI-powered full stack streaming platform in weeks using SDKs, LLMs and modular tools.
Pascual also emphasized that it’s not just anyone who could deliver the same results, saying dotstudio’s robust API with its CMS “shaves off half of the complexity of doing this from a back-end perspective” and it also has engineers that can do QA and look at results.
But the speed it at which it creates solutions using vibe coding “is unrivaled,” he added.
While proof is in the pudding, the AI tools and agents don’t always get things right. That said, even if the AI and vibe coding technique produces errors, the time to fix or adjust is still relatively minimal.
And going back to that time-to-market efficiency gain of 300%, Pascual feels good about the level of accuracy, as a final product can still be launched in a matter of weeks rather than quarters.
Quickly iterating enhanced user features with AI
While among the first to employ this vibe coding technique to fully build a streaming platform, Pascual and Gonzalez exuded confidence and the end result boasts enhanced user features, where future iterations can be delivered at a fast pace and low cost.
By way of example, the first version of Chillfree had a basic thumbnail for content. But among some of the new features for Chillfree that Pascual built out in just a few short weeks using vibe coding include content preview hover-overs like those seen on major SVOD platforms.
He also built features like favoriting, logins, the ability to look at episodic content of a series and creating a most-watched content rail based on analytics. He noted the AI-built platform will be able to feed off dotstudioPro’s analytic system and create new content rails on the fly.
In addition to 24/7 live FAST channels and support for AVOD, the platform features an AI-optimized program guide, personalized discovery through smart AI search and recommendations, as well as cross-platform availability.
“All of that is possible now, whereas all of these iterations would have cost $1,000s and $1,000s of dollars for our customers,” Pascual noted.
And he’s quite ambitious for future features on Chillfree TV from a user experience perspective.
“The speed that we’re going, we’re literally going to have on par features with Netflix in no time," the CTO claimed.
Another aspect of Chillfree that’s AI-powered is background video that plays on content landing pages to represent the platform’s genre verticals like film noir, comedy or cooking.
And AI itself gave the company ideas for how to make the user feel like it wasn’t a heavy-handed AI presence at work - from Easter eggs and creating avatars that introduce certain content categories, to more obvious ones like recommendation and watch-again rails.
It’s not just Chillfree that’s poised to reap the benefits, but dotstudioPro clients at large.
Gonzalez noted that one of the biggest gripes for customers in the streaming space is around an inability to iterate or launch new features after buying an out-of-the-box product, where even simple changes like fonts, for example, can be tech- or cost-prohibitive.
“We are showing through advancements in technology that all of those things are possible and the amount of time spent ideating and developing mocks…are going to be a thing of the past soon,” Gonzalez said. “AI really is becoming that smart and interpretating and really delivering quality product in a fraction of the time.”
Chillfree TV launches with data-informed programming strategy
Chillfree TV features nostalgic or classic TV shows and movies and aside from the efficiency in building the new iteration, dotstudio believes its distinct approach to programming is poised to help set the FAST service up for success.
That includes leaning on a data-informed programming strategy to pick titles and bring together FAST content and channels that have already shown strong metrics on engagement and monetization on other ad-supported linear streaming and AVOD platforms.
“The content we have in Chillfree is content that monetizes on all the top platforms, aggregated into one,” Pascual noted.
The execs believe Chillfree’s curation model is unique, with each title chosen based on the following three-tier criteria:
- Revenue KPIs from third-party platforms that show what content is already working and being monetized
- Editorial oversight from dotstudio’s internal team
- AI-assisted metadata analysis and suggestions
Expanding content with Bayview, more M&A on the horizon
It’s also getting greater depth of content and an expanded distribution network thanks to the recent merger with Bayview Entertainment.
An independent distributor, New Jersey-based Bayview brings 3,500 hours of content to the catalog, under a strategic combination that was funded with support from Ashdown Capital, Royal Bank of Canada, and the Pasadena Angels.
“Bayview’s titles have achieved successful audience engagement and monetization across several notable platforms,” said Peter Castro, President of Bayview, in a statement. “With the addition of Chillfree’s groundbreaking, data-informed streaming platform, our content will extend even further, making this the perfect fit between legacy, innovation, and performance.”
Together dotstudioPro and Bayview represent over 7,500 hours of content across more than 40 AVOD, TVOD and FAST platforms.
As it seeks to introduce new, monetizable FAST channels and continue building a B2B offering, the company is on the hunt for additional M&A.
“Bayview is the first of many to come in terms of mergers and acquisitions that we are considering” to make part of dotstudioPro Gonzalez said, adding the company is looking for vertical integration on both the content and technology front.
In terms of Bayview, Pascual pointed to the company’s position as a player in the traditional content distribution space as complementary to dotstudioPro’s third-party distribution.
“Our synergies really lie in the fact that [Bayview has] been a traditional business for a long time and then just started to move into digital. And we have all of those pipes, but they have access to all the content,” Pascual noted. “So it really made sense for us to merge together as a company.”
And it’s leveraging those distribution connections and analytics to program Chillfree, picking titles that have shown proven engagement and monetization based on content performance and metrics across dotstudio’s extensive third-party network.
An aspect tied to monetization is viewer usage or engagement, where it expects Chillfree to also hit the mark.
“We’re very bullish about the content and now we’re very bullish about the experience,” Pascual said, pointing to the advent of AI. “We’ve sort of cracked the code in terms of AI coding and vibe coding with [Chillfree], where we’ve really accelerated our development over 300% in terms of iterating on these products.”
DotstudioPro doesn’t intend to stop AI-built ad-supported streaming efforts at Chillfree, with Pascual saying two more services are in the works. But before that, it’s ready to tell the market about this first foray, which has been a bit of a hush project until now.
“Chillfree TV is a testament to what’s possible when a robust API-first platform meets next-gen AI,” said Pascual in a statement. “It’s not just innovation for innovation’s sake; this is a fast, smart, scalable platform that amplifies content that’s already proven valuable to viewers and partners alike.”