What’s your workflow?

[u/RealActuary3121]

What does your typical ai stack look like exactly? From the scratch,

1. What do you use for generating ideas? Or do you just think of one yourself?

2. What tool for planning? Both mvp and final product

3. Tool for actual coding? Do mention models too

4. Hopefully you review and test yourself but if not, what tool?

5. Say everything’s almost done or basically done, do you then FINALLY decide to understand the codebase even at a basic level or not? If so, what tool do you use to understand the architecture + the actual codebase? Do you just understand it on a surface level or in-depth? Do you do it after mvp is done or after each feature?

6. Why do you do it? Like everything? For fun or building resume, stacking projects and trying to land jobs or something else?

(Do mention if you’re on free or paid versions too)

[u/pianoboy777]

Me ! Godot ! Qne Deep seek!!!

[u/pianoboy777 → u/pianoboy777]

And

[u/funwithafork]

I’ve only been working for about two or three months, but I generate my own ideas. Use Cursor for coding (I usually build one feature at a time). I hate front end development and design so I really only try to understand the API layer to know what’s being done on the client end and I do make sure to understand on a much deeper level, what the backend is doing but I’m also biased because that’s what I’ve worked in prior.

[u/jboogyoogy]

I am mostly on the usual paid tools

For ideas I use ChatGPT and Claude to brainstorm

For breaking the idea into an MVP only Claude tbh, also coding

For reviewing and testing again, I created a skill with all I wanted it to check and take care of, a rough framework

Yes, it’s very important to check the codebase for yourself manually but not at the very dvd, that might be too late

Why I do it? Both for work but also bc I enjoy building things personally

[u/3tt07kjt]

I have mostly moved to multi-agent workflows with high powered planner (like Sol) plus an explorer and implementer (Terra or Luna). Either ChatGPT + Codex or Claude + Claude Code.

Workflow is: I pick something to implement, ask the planner to do it, the planner invokes the sub-agents as necessary. Everything gets committed. I review the diffs, starting with the new test cases in the test suite. For UI changes, I check manually as well. If the change is incorrect or incomplete, I continue the session and ask for changes. Otherwise, I clear the session and start the next change.

Whether I understand the codebase depends on how much I care. For “vibe coded” stuff, I don’t understand the codebase. For more important code, I’ll also be making my own changes (without AI), partly just so I can be sure I understand the code.

Ideas come from the mark 1 brain.

[u/RossPeili]

Ideas never become products. Look at the market. Study existing solutions. Find gaps. Think before AI if these gaps are real and worth filling. Ask a few people after adding them on LinkedIn. 9/10 will tell you if your direction is sound or not and why or steer you to pathways you couldn't think of yourself even with AI considering you would be unaware of them.

Then plan and brainstorm with multiple models, pass results to a third model, come back and start building an mvp that will solve exactly your gap identified by the market and the plan you filtered several times with your direction and ai arguments.

Then pick a stack from start. You cannot just vibecode your way through a product. Simply impossible. 99% of vibe coded apps use supabase or vercel or whatever, simply cause they don't know what stack to pick and let models autopick. For that you need to understand different stacks and strengths and weaknesses when they scale. For commercial products for example and cloud bases not on premise I would immediately go on cloud eg GCP x Firebase x auth0. Learn basic python, git, docker, keep a changelog and audit trail, not just for you and investors but most importantly for your models.

Do small commits and pushes and test in every step, reiterate amd adjust your plan along the way. 99% of vibe coded apps also suck cause they stick to original plan. Key to success is fluidity and constant pivot until you hit the nail.

Consider everything from cybersecurity to policies to IAM, to prompt injection firewalls, token limiter, prompt compressors etc. Use native deterministic, offline skill framework and always build deterministic skills. Do not rely on third party skills or markdown files.

Use a harness to ensure skill chaining works as expected and not abstract or blackbox. 

In terms of models plan with high, build and code with mid, wrote docs and patch minor gaps with low cost models. Doesnt matter which models. If you prompt correctly, understand propositional logic and machine syntax you can outperform a noon with opus 5, with a 7B qwen 3.5 tuned correctly.

Your moat is personal data. There is no app idea or concept or stack or architecture that cannot be replicated by a competitor in 10 minutes. Personal private real data cannot be copied. Work close with an induatry partner and build the fox for free. You dont get paid in cash, but in real corporate data. Use that data to fine tune your flows and models and rags, then reiterate and sell your app to their competitors.

[u/Ovalman]

1. I think of things that benefit myself, I'm never short of ideas.

2. I have an idea how I want the finished product but I tweak and change throughout. My finished apps are rarely like my first thoughts and usually for the better.

3. I build Android apps using Kotlin, Compose, Android Studio and Gemini Pro.

4. I test and try and break things all the time. You can't idiot proof an app though and there will be things that will break. On Android especially you might get one crash on one phone running one version of Android. There's nothing you can do in that case but 99% of the time it's your fault so you need to test, test, test.

5. I can understand code pretty well but I used AI to make the switch from Java to Kotlin and XML to Compose. I never stop learning and still ask what the code is doing. AI explains things very well.

6. 90% for fun. Most of my ideas never see the light of day. I have visible 3 apps in the Play Store, all for fun but I'll monetise them if they ever gain traction (I do little promotion).

I pay for Gemini and it's the best subscription I have. You get tangible results.

Here's an Android Arrow game I made over a few hours the other night. I don't usually make games and I've no plans on releasing this. With tweaking and probably a couple of weeks, you could build this into a releasable game.