DEV Community: Jake Counsell

The way vibe coders are building is broken and not aligned with how successful startups and product teams build.

Jake Counsell — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:18:09 +0000

Every successful startup does market research, competitive analysis, ICP substitute behavior mapping, and customer complaint / delight sentiment analysis; then based off that data they find a competitive feature wedge for their ICP. After they’ve found their wedge they create an MVP, rarely have they talked to a single customer at this point. Once their MVP is finished they start talking to customers, synthesize the feedback and then iterate or pivot their MVP.

Meanwhile, you started vibing based off an idea, did zero real world research, asked a few mutuals “would you pay for this bro”. Then once your product is done you complain about distribution being your problem and go weeks without iterating the product.

LaunchChair gives you the structure of a product team and holds your hand through the research, helps you rapidly create your MVP with an auto-generated PRD / spec / MVP blueprint, then based off that PRD and spec helps you actually build the MVP with feature by feature prompts that save on token usage and force your LLM to write better code and solid structure for scale.

Building is fun. But building for actual user pain is smart! Validate your ideas now for free, no credit card needed! https://www.launchchair.io

I made a totally free tool where you can post / save / remix public and private prompts and have them instantly scored with insight on how to improve them.

Jake Counsell — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:56:21 +0000

So I just pushed this live last night, I’ve been casually working on it while working on a few larger projects. I’m actually pretty stoked on it and would love for the community to give it a gander.

A few things about it:
📌 You can post public or private prompts, if you want it to act as a repository of private prompts and saved prompts.
📌 The prompt grading uses a pretty cool rubric algorithm I created and some NLP magic. Prompts are scored across 4 criteria.
📌 Prompt grading is real-time so while you’re creating, editing, or remixing a prompt it will give you scores for all criteria and insights on how to improve the prompt.
📌 All scores in your prompts and any public prompt give actionable insight on how to improve the prompt and an explanation of why it scored a certain way.
📌 You can up-vote, down-vote, save, comment, and remix other users prompts. Remixing a prompt always shows lineage and origin prompt.
📌 It’s also a backlink generator for your personal project, every prompt you create has an author box with your project / product website link and your X profile link.
📌 Users receive points for every up-vote and save their prompts receive, doing cool things with points in the future.

Give it a look if you’re curious: https://promptjoy.app

And here’s a prompt page if you want to see the prompt scoring / grading: https://promptjoy.app/prompts/40557f9e-1756-4f3f-9bb1-6e1eed1fda0a

Someone recreated StumbleUpon for startup landing pages!

Jake Counsell — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:29:09 +0000

Click “Start Hopping” it’s pretty fun! The leaderboards are also realtime. https://buildhop.io/

Your Code Isn’t Broken. Your Prompts Are.

Jake Counsell — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 05:19:21 +0000

Most people don’t realize what’s actually breaking when they “vibe code.”

It’s not the model. It’s not even the code.

It’s the lack of structure between what you asked for and what actually got built.

That gap is where time gets burned, tokens get wasted, and projects quietly fall apart.

That’s the problem we built LaunchChair to solve.

https://www.launchchair.io/

⸻

The core idea: dynamic prompting that actually stays grounded

In LaunchChair, you’re not writing prompts.

Every step in the build phase is driven by dynamic prompts generated from your evolving product spec. Those prompts are not just instructions, they’re structured with:

strict agent contracts
scoped context pulled from your spec
feature-level constraints
taste and implementation guidance

So instead of dumping your entire app into a single massive prompt and hoping for the best, every build card is focused, intentional, and tied directly to what you’re trying to ship.

That alone cuts a huge amount of drift.

But we ran into something interesting.

Even with strong prompts, sometimes the output is almost right.

Backend is done. API is wired. But the frontend isn’t fully connected.

That’s where most people go back to guessing.

We didn’t want that.

⸻

The new piece: automatic remediation prompts

We just shipped a remediation system that closes that loop.

Every time a build card runs, LaunchChair checks the returned JSON against the acceptance criteria for that step.

Not loosely. Directly.

If something is incomplete, like:

frontend not wired to API
missing state handling
partial feature implementation

LaunchChair doesn’t just tell you “something is wrong.”

It generates a remediation prompt automatically.

A focused, context-aware follow up that:

knows what was already built
knows what’s missing
only asks for the delta

So instead of rewriting prompts or re-explaining your app, you just run the remediation and move forward.

No guessing. No prompt thrashing.

⸻

Why this build system is different

Most “vibe coding” workflows look like this:

You start with a rough idea
You write a big prompt
You iterate
The context gets messy
You lose track of what’s done
You burn tokens trying to fix it

LaunchChair flips that.

You move through a structured build system where:

each step has clear acceptance criteria
prompts are generated for you
outputs are validated against the spec
gaps are automatically remediated

It’s not just helping you build faster.

It’s helping you stay aligned with what you’re building.

⸻

Why vibe coders actually benefit the most

If you’re someone who doesn’t want to think about prompt engineering all day, this is where things click.

You don’t need to:

figure out how to structure prompts
manage context windows
re-explain your app every time something breaks

You just move through the system.

LaunchChair handles the prompting layer, the validation, and now the recovery when things are incomplete.

It feels a lot closer to actually building a product instead of wrestling with a model.

⸻

The time and token difference

This is where it gets real.

In traditional vibe coding, you’re constantly:

over-sending context
rewriting prompts
re-running large generations
fixing things that were almost correct

That adds up fast.

With scoped prompts + contracts + remediation:

you’re only sending what’s needed
you’re not re-generating entire features
you’re fixing precise gaps instead of starting over

In practice, this trims a huge chunk of token usage and iteration time.

Not in a theoretical way.

In a “you actually finish the build without burning your entire week or budget” kind of way.

⸻

What this unlocks

The goal isn’t just cleaner prompts.

It’s momentum.

When the system can:

guide the build
check the output
fix what’s missing

you stop getting stuck in that loop where things feel almost done but never quite ship.

You just keep moving forward.

That’s the difference.

And it’s the reason LaunchChair isn’t just another tool in the stack.

It’s the layer that keeps the whole build from drifting in the first place.