Vibe Coding 101

Developers love to hate on vibe-coded apps. Some of the worry is real, a lot of it is condescending. This guide explains what they're saying, what it means for your app, and gives non-coders copy-paste prompts to respond without handing over the keys.

1 min read

They’ll call it AI slop. They’ll say you’ll fail in production. They’ll insist you need a “real” engineer before you’ve had a fair shot. When the critique names something specific (a missing log, no deploy path, no error handling), take it seriously. When it stays vague, it’s often less about your app and more about who gets to build.

Five chapters. The prompts I use on real codebases, not theory, not syntax drills.

Chapters

A. Know What's Happening (i.e. observability)

You need to know your app does what you say it does, and still does after you change it.
B. Change It Without Breaking It (i.e. spaghetti code)

You need consistent patterns so nobody can dismiss what you built at a glance.
C. Ship Updates Safely (i.e. CI/CD or SDLC)

You need a test version, a live version, and a clear way to ship without everything on the fly.
D. Protect Your Business and Customers (i.e. security)

You need keys off your laptop and a straight answer when someone asks if you’re safe.
E. Grow Without Falling Apart (i.e. scalability)

You need infrastructure sized for where you are, not where LinkedIn thinks you should be.

Do this last

Continuing Ed

Use these prompts to build education-plan.md in your project: a syllabus tied to your app, and a Cursor skill you can rerun to stay sharp on concepts (not syntax).

Open prompts →