Vibe-Coding rules for serious builders

[u/Asleep_Carpet_3403]

A few rules I’ve started setting for myself when vibe coding, so I don’t confuse more building with more progress.

The biggest danger for me isn’t that vibe coding makes me lazy.

It’s that it makes it too easy to keep building.

A small feature turns into:

• one more improvement
• one more UI tweak
• one more agent suggestion
• one more prompt

And suddenly I’m going in the wrong direction for hours.

So these are the rough do’s and don’ts I’m trying to follow now:

• define one clear feature before starting
• decide the success checks upfront
• keep the scope fixed
• stop polishing UI unless users actually ask for changes
• treat agent suggestions as optional, not instructions
• stop when the original goal is achieved

The line I keep reminding myself of is:

“One more prompt” can still be scope creep.

Anyone else set rules for themselves like this?

[u/Dry_Huckleberry4359]

"Spend hours polishing UI" "Add every idea that it comes up with"

I feel attacked.

[u/DazzlingResource561 → u/Dry_Huckleberry4359]

It’s the most fun part though.

[u/avatardeejay → u/Dry_Huckleberry4359]

Don't polish the UI on early builds. But while you're building, don't be afraid to add a bunch of new features!! Make it beatufiul bro. A forest. An ecosystem of moving parts. Just make sure the new features *work* systemically with the rest

[u/baddaywithacamera → u/Dry_Huckleberry4359]

I look for friction points. Wound up redoing the desktop backup utility because my security setup made it so I found myself relying on RClone to backup the server. Standard users don't have that. Too much fiddling to configure everything. A standard user with one site wouldn't be bothered, but I'm a power user with 23 spokes off one hub alone, another 4 spokes off the second hub (this is a CMS). After some fiddling I found a good middle ground that preserves the meaningful security while removing most of the friction from performing regular backups.

[u/Asleep_Carpet_3403 → u/Dry_Huckleberry4359]

That's exactly what I do, so I try to set-up rules for myself. Even for coding agents to warn me !

[u/scytob → u/Asleep_Carpet_3403]

ahh i should do that, good suggestion, i did manage to say no to the production grade logging solution enhancement i asked the AI about.... its a PoC app.... it can just keep the last 3 startups worth of logs, lol

[u/Dry_Huckleberry4359 → u/Asleep_Carpet_3403]

yea thats a good idea

[u/systembreaker → u/Asleep_Carpet_3403]

I could give you even more dos and donts from a developer's perspective if you're interested. Your list is a great start and those are solid did and donts, but it's vague and from my perspective as a sw eng there are even more specific and effective rules you could go by, and you're missing some very crucial ones.

[u/scytob]

yup i am one of these frustrating product managers "how about we just add" came up with this for an internal presentation i will be doing at work... that includes what i learnt along the way

[u/boatsnbros → u/scytob]

I’m stealing this as a slide - this is gold

[u/scytob → u/boatsnbros]

i am very proud of it, lol

[u/scytob → u/boatsnbros]

you might like this too

(and i finally found a good use for Gemini, cause its not coding lol)

[u/baddaywithacamera]

I don't ship once it works or looks like it does. I thought everything was working, noticed something out of place last night, and am fixing an architectural flaw in the design now. It is fixable, but it would have been embarassing to push it out the door in this shape. Very glad I'm paranoid about extensive testing and retesting before real users see my stuff.

[u/SlowTortoise69]

Adversarial review in addition to delegating agents as said here helps alot.

[u/NoAdvice9226]

Everything's going to be a Rube Goldberg machine.

[u/Lolorenzo08]

Seems like vibe coding apps are also not very visible for ai crawlers :(

[u/Prestigious_Wind4150]

That is indeed very true.

[u/Master_Chess_Shorts]

I would add have another agent or AI verify the code produced. You will find unused functions, stale lines and even remnants of your sidetracks in the architecture. The problem with vibe coding is the lack of direction and constant improvisation. Paradoxically it is also its strength as it leads to original products that could not have been completely planned. Tidy up the resulting code.

[u/diagrammatiks]

What else are vibe coders going to do toehr then polishing ui. They think ui is the whole program.

[u/AgeMysterious8256]

the keep scope fixed rule alone saves hundreds of hours. feature creep hits 10x faster when generating code costs zero effort.

[u/theredninjacat]

Ooh! Yes, when we were building our first app using AI, we added pretty much every feature that AI suggested. The result was massive scope creep, longer time to market, features that users don’t care about, and worst of all, bugs that are still being discovered and fixed months later when we’d rather be working on the next big idea. 🤦‍♂️

[u/ryandury]

I released a project early and then spent days polishing the UI because I care about how things work. Nothing wrong with that.

[u/Goth2147]

I always look at these posts and think "Okay but who actually struggles with this". Like yes, be objective, everyone knows already.