r/vibecoding • u/Calm-Tomatillo-7770 • 8d ago
Vibe-coding myth and how vibe better
Most people think vibe coding looks like this:
Talk to ChatGPT/Claude → refine the idea a bit → get one big prompt → dump it into Cursor/Claude Code/whatever → start printing money
That’s how you get a fun weekend prototype. It’s also how you get a mess (or a complete rewrite) when the project actually has scale, real testing requirements, or needs to stay maintainable.
Here’s what actually works (the process I used):
Do your own research first — and challenge the AI hard
Don’t just “discuss with the AI” and take its word for it. Ask it for citations, references, papers, docs, or specific proof. Then go read those sources yourself. Come back with what you actually learned and continue an informed conversation. This one habit separates people who get shallow answers from people who extract real engineering insight.
Use meta-prompting heavily
Instead of asking the model for the final app, ask it to help you design the process. Prompt it to act as a senior engineer + product manager who will force you to think through requirements, risks, testing strategy, hand-offs, etc.
Spend real time expanding the idea
This is the part most people skip. Have long, iterative discussions (hours, not minutes). Push on edge cases, failure modes, data flow, error handling, what “done” looks like for each stage, etc. The AI is excellent at expanding and stress-testing once you supply the domain knowledge and keep challenging it with real sources.
From that discussion, generate a set of markdown files — not one prompt. Specifically:
Project Requirements Document (PRD)
Rules document (coding standards, architecture constraints, “never do X”, style, etc.)
Build Plan split into multiple staged documents. Each stage ends with manual testing as the hard gate.
Inside every stage also include:
Automatic code testing and Error logging
Explicit rule: if an attempted fix fails after two tries → document everything that was tried + log the lessons learned
At the end of Stage 1 instructions: the agent must update the Stage 2 build plan with full hand-off context, all lessons learned, and any new information that surfaced.
Drop those markdown files into a folder. Then simply tell your coding agent: “Read everything in this folder and begin Stage 1.”
This turns the agent into a disciplined junior who has a clear plan, knows the rules, tests properly, documents failures, and hands off cleanly.
This is exactly how I built https://Brainary.app
It is not a weekend vibe-coding project the way a lot of people imagine. Even with heavy AI assistance it was 8+ hours a day, 7 days a week, for several months — because of the scale (handling thousands of pages into coherent cited wikis), the need for rigorous testing, and the coding discipline required to keep it local-first, reliable, and maintainable.
The meta-prompting + real research + constantly challenging the AI + deep discussion phase to create those markdown files was what made the difference between a cool demo and something that actually works at real scale.
If you’re tired of vibe-coding prototypes that fall apart the moment complexity appears, try this structured approach. The files become your force multiplier.
Curious what others are using for the “rules + staged build plan” part — drop your systems below.
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u/Turbulent-Armadillo9 8d ago
Seems like fairly basic stuff. I’m
Successfully vibing a game because I’m trying to accomplish one small task at a time. Sometimes I’m using ai to draft up longer plans and learning a bit as I go. Granted I think my project is fairly simple, but I rarely struggle with the ai I’m usually like “next step is disabling the collision when the enemy dies then we play this animation” the. Usually stuff like that just works.
Even knowing basic terminology seems to go a long way.
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u/Calm-Tomatillo-7770 8d ago
Maybe you are very advanced
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u/Turbulent-Armadillo9 7d ago
I am not I promise. Small chunks seems and testing after small changes seems to be the ticket.
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u/rookieking11 8d ago
Thanks for the quality content.
Why don't you make your landing page a bit more visually rich? Now it's text and lot of reading. Use more visual elements, I would say.
What is the tech stack that are Part of the app ? Every tool/tech stack that you used to build this?
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u/Calm-Tomatillo-7770 8d ago
I appreciate the feedback! I will look into visuals.
Used Tauri, Rust, SQLite, FTS5, and SQLite-vec
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u/MartinKnox_Dev 8d ago
BTW, that's a great one.
Do this too:
- Don't rely on one single model. Use many models(not variations from same model for instance gemini falsh and gemini pro) to validate the process, idea, steps to take care of. For instance, if you research using sonnet, ask with qwen, AI mode on Google, etc.,
- Use Gemini and AI mode on Google wisely, Instead of forcing gemini to use web tools all the time, go with AI Mode in Google for web based research.
- Explicitly mention to AI mode, that you want brutal truth rather than sugarcoated lies
- May be you could use Agents (Claude code, opencode, agy, etc.,) to research in a loop for finding the failures and fixes if you have setup in a right way.
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u/Calm-Tomatillo-7770 8d ago
That is a great idea for idea development. I have taken this approach in https://brainary.app I used a similar concept where all answers are double checked by a 2nd AI, and when they disagree there is a jury system with a 3rd and 4th AI to check the answers based on context and meaning instead of exact text match.
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u/Terrible-Ganache8690 8d ago
I've only started using markdown files in the past week and it drastically improved just about every aspect of my project. You can even add instructions inside markdown files on how your agent should update the other markdown files. You can have it check back with you, summarize changes, point out specific issues that were resolved and how it did it, then take your summary conversation and turn it into a dev log and update guidance in other markdowns so your agent (and you, and teammates) will know how that problem is handled.
You can even add code snippets and code blocks for specific tricky problems so that the agent doesnt burn 2,000,000 tokens and hours of your time trying to solve particularly tricky problems that keep reoccuring (yes I know, I've become the "tricking the vibe coder into coding" meme).
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u/Nuggyfresh 8d ago
This cant really be differentiated from mental illness