It started with Mantı
in Istanbul.

It was a rainy Sunday in Üsküdar, Istanbul. Three friends — tired, slightly lost, and very hungry — ducked into a small restaurant and ordered a round of Mantı, the tiny Turkish dumplings that make you feel like everything is going to be okay.

Between bites, someone said: "Why is this city so good? Like, actually — why does it feel the way it does?" We started listing things. The chaos and the calm. The bridges between continents. The food that costs nothing and tastes like everything. The fact that you could go out at 2am and still find a bakery and a bookshop open.

And then: "Does any website actually capture this? The vibe?"

We looked for a website that captured it. There were city guides full of listicles. Travel blogs with affiliate links. Expat forums with arguments about safety scores. Nothing that felt like what we actually wanted — a living, honest, human map of what cities feel like from the inside.

That dinner was the beginning of an epic multi-city trip, and also the beginning of this. The Vibe Index is our attempt to answer the question we asked over that bowl of Mantı — to build a map that tells you not just what's in a city, but how it feels.

We're just getting started. Come help us build it.