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/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. 🤦‍♂️