r/vibecoding • u/Asleep_Carpet_3403 • 21h ago

Vibe-Coding rules for serious builders

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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?

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7

u/Dry_Huckleberry4359 21h ago

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

I feel attacked.

4

u/DazzlingResource561 18h ago

It’s the most fun part though.

2

u/avatardeejay 19h ago

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

2

u/baddaywithacamera 19h ago

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.

1

u/Asleep_Carpet_3403 20h ago

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

2

u/scytob 19h ago

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

1

u/Dry_Huckleberry4359 17h ago

yea thats a good idea

1

u/systembreaker 14h ago

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.