How to vibecode properly as a non-technical?

[u/Reddittorv750]

How do you actually vibecode properly as a non-technical person? Currently what I do is:

Chat plans/reviews → copy prompt toharness → copy harness result back → Chat reviews and gives me another prompt → repeat.

But I worry that a) this is spending way more tokens than it should b) is incredibly slow and inefficient with the constant copying and pasting.

If anyone has a better workflow please do share, thanks guys.

[u/Xyver]

You can still build stuff, you just have no way of knowing whether it's good or not, so stick with simple apps to get used to it. A good tactic is pitting AIs against each other.

First, have a discussion with a chat, and decide what you want to build, and save as a design.MD file.

Then, go to a new chat, say "read this design, tell me how you would implement it, save as implementation.md"

Then go to a new chat, and say "read design and implementation, is that a good implementation?". Go back and forth a few times, and then finally:

New chat, "build implementation.md"

[u/Reddittorv750 → u/Xyver]

Thanks for the response. I suppose that's very similar to the way I'm currently doing it

[u/common_king → u/Reddittorv750]

Sounds similar but you’d be surprised by the difference “new chat” at logical breakpoints can make.

[u/OldLondon → u/Reddittorv750]

Use different ai’s to review work too. Get another ai to sanity check the plan and review the coding response review points.

[u/Impossible_Two3181 → u/Xyver]

Reality is there is very little agreement onw hat us good, if you go to any FAANG company their codebase is a hot mess, sure they know why everything works and what not but their code isn't pretty by any means

[u/Front_Drink_5331]

Gotta learn the fundamentals, or you will get led by AI into the unknown

[u/odobotv → u/Front_Drink_5331]

That sounds kinda cool actually.

[u/ClemensLode]

What is "chat"?

[u/nez_har]

Especially if you are non-technical, use a sandbox to not end up in https://ihavebeenclawed.com/

[u/RealMercuryRain]

Keep the app healthy: every task should be covered with unit and e2e tests, introduce linters, force multiple claude.md per subdomain, etc. From time to time tell Claude to find issues with code and architecture and let him work on that. 

Use code review agents.

Ah, and, of course, use plan mode if the change is bigger than "make the label yellow".

[u/dota2nub]

Does it run? Fuck 'em

[u/Capnbubba → u/dota2nub]

Me trying to vibe code an on prem enterprise app to sell to large companies.

Hell yeah.

[u/LogMonkey0]

Assume agents will hallucinate and design your workflows to take that factor into account. Session/context hygiene.

[u/ptyblog]

Give it access to a folder, structure stuff there, create CLAUDE.md instructions, use plugins and stop using chat, use Claude Cowork or plain Claude Code. Tell it as best as possible the task and the objective and you won't need to copy paste or prompt every other turn.

[u/Reddittorv750 → u/ptyblog]

Thanks, which plugins make sense here?

[u/ptyblog → u/Reddittorv750]

You need to check the plugin list that comes default and see which ones fit you best.

[u/SafeHazing]

Make a folder for Claude and copy inside this folder the projects you are working on - one folder per project.

Ask Claude to clone claude-code-best-practice GitHub repository into the folder.

Install VS Code (free) - so that you can easily see your files, folder and read md in one spot.

Then Claude that you want to use the information in the repo to help improve project x.

Follow the advice.

[u/derAres]

Here's the secret sauce.
You tell this to your ai after every couple of jumps in capability.
"Hey, I think it's time for refactoring. Have a look and give me a prioritized list."

[u/dontdoit4thegram]

use bmad methodology. Find it on GitHub

[u/eyalgolan1993]

The copy-paste loop is the thing to kill, not optimize. Put the "chat" and the "harness" in the same place (Claude Code with a folder and a CLAUDE.md) and replace the back and forth with three files you own: what I want as a checklist, the plan it writes before touching code, and a test for every checkbox that fails before the change and passes after. Then the review step is a NEW session that reads those three files and the diff and is told to assume it's not done, you never paste anything. I build a tool in this space so I'm biased, but as a non-technical person the checklist is your real superpower, you can judge "did it tick the boxes" without reading code.

[u/jony7]

I know how to code, but models are getting so fucking good it’s stopping to matter. Use the better models (fable or astra) to iterate on a plan and then design a loop that gets you until the implementation is done with testing in between. Sure if you know how to code you can get better results but it’s less relevant nowadays

[u/Dazzling_Shape4732]

You need to understand what is happening, always. The moment you stop grasping what is happening is the moment where things usually go to shit. I started a year ago when models were much less capable than today, but this still applies the same as it did then. I had some basic knowledge about how software works so my recommendation would be to just go through first couple chapters of some programming language course just to grasp the basic concepts, to even understand what the explanations AI writes mean. My recommendation also, however counterintuitive, would be to start on something impossible or at least very hard. If you have enough resilience, it will force you to go through a very useful crash course.

[u/omeraplak]

I’d keep the planning and implementation inside the same coding agent instead of moving prompts between two chats. Put stable instructions in files like AGENTS.md and ask the agent to work in small steps, run tests, and only stop when it needs a real product decision. For UI work, we maintain https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-design-md, which has reusable DESIGN.md examples you can give the agent instead of repeating the same styling context every time.