Hey,
There is a version of vibe coding being sold right now that I want to talk about.
You have seen the videos. A founder opens a new chat. Describes an idea. Forty minutes later they are showing a working product. The comments are full of people saying "this changes everything." Two million views. The algorithm loves it.
I make content about vibe coding. I teach people to build with AI. I run a community of people doing exactly this.
Here is what those videos do not tell you.
The version being sold in those videos is not the whole story. And for most of the people watching, the gap between what they were shown and what they are actually going to experience is going to cost them real time and real money.
This week I want to talk about what the promise gets right, what it quietly skips over, and what it actually takes for vibe coding to work the way you are hoping it will.
What the Promise Gets Right
The basic claim is true.
You can build a working prototype faster than any other time in history. Someone with no formal coding background can take an idea, describe it clearly, and get something running in a day. The barrier to starting has genuinely collapsed.
I have seen this happen with people who six months ago could not have built anything on their own. A year ago, getting a working web app meant either writing every line yourself or paying a developer and waiting weeks. That is genuinely no longer true.
So when the videos say vibe coding changes what is possible for builders, they are not wrong. It does.
The problem is not the claim. The problem is what they leave out of it.
The Track Between the Starting Line and the Finish Line
Every vibe coding demo has the same structure.
Someone opens a chat. They type a description. AI produces code. It works. They repeat. In twenty minutes they have a landing page. In two hours they have a database. In a weekend they have a product.
What you do not see in those twenty minutes is the person's judgment about how to structure the build. You do not see them making decisions about what to build first, what can wait, and what would create problems later if they got it wrong. You do not see them reading the AI output and knowing when to accept it and when to push back.
You see the execution. You do not see the thinking that made the execution possible.
The promise says anyone can do this. What it means is anyone can generate code. The gap between those two things is where most people run into trouble.
The tool generates the code. That part is handled. What it cannot do is decide what to build, read its own output critically, or steer the project when something goes sideways. That has to come from you.
Where People Get Stuck
The people I see struggling with vibe coding are not struggling because they are bad at it. They are struggling because the promise set up the wrong expectations.
They believed that describing an idea was enough. That AI would figure out the architecture. That if something broke, AI would fix it without making five other things worse. That the gap between "I have a working demo" and "I have a product I can maintain" was small.
None of those things are true for anything beyond the simplest builds.
The more complex your idea, the more decisions you have to make that the tool cannot make for you. What does the user flow actually look like? Where does the data live? What happens when two features interact in a way you did not anticipate when you wrote the first prompt?
AI is very good at answering the questions you ask. It cannot ask the questions you have not thought of yet. In a complex build, those unasked questions are exactly where most of the problems hide.
The demo worked because the person building it had already thought through most of those questions before they opened the chat. They just moved fast because the tool handled the execution. You did not see the thinking. You saw the speed.
What Vibe Coding Is Actually Good For
I use these tools every day. I am not trying to talk you out of them. But there is a difference between knowing what a tool can and cannot do and just hoping it covers everything.
Vibe coding is a multiplier. If you bring clarity about what you are building, it will build it faster than you imagined. If you bring some understanding of how software works, even a rough one, it will let you skip the slow parts and focus on the decisions. If you bring judgment about when something is right and when it needs to be redone, it gives you the raw material to work with at speed.
It is not a shortcut around thinking. It is a tool that executes your thinking fast.
The demos are showing you what is possible when someone who already has judgment uses a tool that removes the execution bottleneck. The judgment was always there. The videos just do not film that part.
If you are willing to develop your judgment alongside the tool, vibe coding is one of the most powerful things available to a builder right now. If you are treating it as a replacement for judgment, you are going to hit a wall. And the wall will arrive faster than you expect because the tool let you build up speed before it got there.
Your Action for This Week
Before your next build, answer these three questions on paper. Not in a chat. On paper.
What decisions will I have to make during this build that AI cannot make for me?
What will I need to understand about what gets built so I can fix it when something breaks?
What is the simplest version that proves whether this idea actually works before I build everything?
If those questions feel difficult, you are in exactly the right place. That difficulty is the thinking the demo skipped. Do it now, before you open a chat. The tool will move fast. Make sure you know where you are going first.
Reply and tell me what this brings up for you. I read every reply.
If you want a framework for scoping a build before you start, it is in the VibeShip Vault. And if someone you know jumped into vibe coding full speed after watching a demo and is now stuck, send them here to join the community free.
See you next week.
Prathamesh
Founder, VibeShip