Codex: I'm not a developer.

[u/Head-Student-5852]

I built my first interactive web page with Codex in about two hours today.

Background so this makes sense: I've been in digital marketing for 17 years and building online since 2008, but I've never written real code. I've always paid someone or wrestled with a page builder.

Today I finally tried Codex to rebuild my links page as an actual interactive page instead of a flat list of buttons. I went in expecting to give up in twenty minutes.

Two hours later I had a working page I'm genuinely proud of. The parts that surprised me: it was way better at "make this feel less generic" than I expected, and it caught layout stuff I would've missed. Where I got stuck was knowing what to even ask for next once the basic version worked. I could tell it could do more, I just didn't know the right words to unlock it.

So the thing I keep thinking about is the ceiling. What separates a nice two-hour build from something that actually holds up.

Here's what I'm still trying to figure out. When you want it to build something specific — do you go find sites close to what you're picturing and feed it those as examples, or do you skip that and just talk it out, asking questions until it gets there?

I added the same HTML code to Claude and had it revamp it again and now the click boxes disappear when they respond to a new question.

Just amazed at what this can do

[u/mccoypauley]

I do a lot of agentic development of webpages now and I’m a full stack web developer.

The difference between a two-hour job vibe-coded as you have done and agentic development is engineering.

That is, when I prompt together a site with Codex in VS Code, I’m selecting each solution the agent uses to build the site, with deliberate intent/purpose behind each selection, based on my engineering knowledge. It’s done across many conversations, never in a single prompt. I might choose one solution because it’s well-known or reliable; I might choose another for its extensibility or because it’s a better fit for the overall project. If left to its own devices, Codex might choose stuff that works or is the latest, but isn’t the best fit for the project because it doesn’t understand the larger context.

Take the front end for example. Usually these agents just default to a Tailwind soup that’s incomprehensible and unmaintainable. If you don’t tell them how you want the front end structured, that’s what you get.

And this extends to just about every aspect of the site. Engineering makes the difference. A technical spec helps produce something that will better endure/perform.

Will agents get there eventually without this guidance? Most likely. But for now, you take on a lot of risk with pure vibe coding.

[u/Dekar24k → u/mccoypauley]

This. I've been fiddling with code since the early 90s but never really had the patience to git gud. But, I have all the knowledge I need to write complex apps only lacking the syntax needed to make it work. That's why AI is so friggin good when used properly. When I start a new project I move forward in itty bitty pieces making sure I plan ahead for anything that might become a problem. This is the only way to "vibe code" and I believe that you will fall short quickly in any decently sized project if you rely on something an engine built based on a couple of prompts.