VibeOps Quickstart: From Clone to Governed Agent in 5 Minutes

Natu Lauchande — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:06:40 +0000

You've heard about VibeOps. Here's how it actually feels to use it.

Five minutes. Real interaction. No hand-waving.

Step 1 — Configure Your Code Agent

VibeOps works with whatever AI coding tool you already use.

Claude Code

# CLAUDE.md in the repo root is a symlink to AGENTS.md
# Claude reads it automatically — nothing to configure

Cursor
Add to your .cursorrules:

Always read AGENTS.md at the start of every session before writing any code.

Windsurf / Copilot / any tool with a system prompt
Paste the contents of AGENTS.md into your project context or system prompt.

The rule: your agent needs to read AGENTS.md before it does anything. That's it.

Step 2 — Get the Template

Go to the repo and click "Use this template" → "Create a new repository"

👉 https://github.com/vibeops-central/fastapi-vibeops-template

This creates a fresh repo in your account with no git history — clean slate, ready to build.

Or via GitHub CLI:

gh repo create my-project --template vibeops-central/fastapi-vibeops-template
cd my-project

The template ships with AGENTS.md already written — a full agent constitution covering architecture, conventions, hard constraints, and the Feature Kickoff Protocol.

Open it. Read it. It's the most important file in the repo.

Step 3 — Fire Up Your Agent

Open the project in your tool of choice and start a new session.

Your agent will read AGENTS.md and know:

The stack (FastAPI, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy 2.0 async, Redis)
The patterns to follow
The mistakes it's not allowed to make
How to handle new feature requests

Now give it something real to build.

Step 4 — Prompt Your App

Here's where VibeOps earns its keep. Try this:

You: New feature: user registration and JWT authentication

A non-governed agent starts writing code immediately.

A VibeOps-governed agent does this instead:

Agent: Entering design mode. No code yet.

I'll produce a spec and test scenarios for your review before writing anything.

specs/auth.md (excerpt):

## Feature: User Registration & JWT Auth

### Scope
- POST /auth/register — create user, hash password with bcrypt
- POST /auth/login — validate credentials, return JWT access token
- JWT: RS256, 30-min expiry, user_id + roles in payload

### Hard constraints (from AGENTS.md)
- Use bcrypt directly — no passlib
- All DB calls via async SQLAlchemy session
- No synchronous code in async routes

tests/bdd/features/auth.feature (excerpt):

Feature: User Authentication

  Scenario: Successful registration
    Given no user exists with email "dev@example.com"
    When I POST /auth/register with valid credentials
    Then the response status is 201
    And a user record exists in the database

  Scenario: Login with valid credentials
    Given a user exists with email "dev@example.com"
    When I POST /auth/login with correct password
    Then the response status is 200
    And the response contains an access_token

Spec and scenarios are ready. Reply *"proceed"** to begin implementation.*

You: proceed

Agent: Implementing...

src/models/user.py — SQLAlchemy User model
src/routers/auth.py — register + login endpoints
src/services/auth_service.py — bcrypt hashing, JWT generation
tests/bdd/steps/auth_steps.py — BDD step definitions

All tests passing. No passlib. No sync code in async routes. Vibecheck: 10/12.

That's the loop. Spec → Gherkin → Approval → Code. Every time.

Why It Works

The agent didn't guess at your conventions. It didn't invent its own patterns. It read AGENTS.md, knew the rules, and followed them — without you having to repeat yourself.

That's what governed agentic development looks like.

Next Steps

⭐ Star the template on GitHub
📖 Read the 12 Vibing Factors
💬 Share your Vibecheck score with #VibeOps

VibeOps — the governance layer for the agentic era.
vibeopscentral.ai

VibeOps: The Missing Governance Layer in Agentic Coding

Natu Lauchande — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 04:05:01 +0000

You've felt it. That moment when you prompt your AI coding agent, it confidently generates 200 lines of code — and somehow breaks three things you didn't ask it to touch.

The agent was vibing. But it wasn't governed.

That's the gap VibeOps fills.

What is VibeOps?

VibeOps is a governance and optimisation framework for agentic coding environments. It sits between you and your AI agent — not to slow it down, but to make it consistently good.

Think of it as the missing config layer. You have:

package.json for dependencies
.env for secrets
Dockerfile for environments
AGENTS.md for your AI agent's behaviour ← this is VibeOps

The Problem with Raw Vibing

Modern AI coding tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude, Devin) are powerful but chaotic without structure. Left ungoverned, agents:

Forget context between sessions
Make assumptions that break conventions
Repeat mistakes they've already made
Have no memory of what "good" looks like in your codebase

You end up re-explaining, re-correcting, and re-reviewing the same things. The agent is fast, but you become the bottleneck.

The VibeOps Solution

VibeOps introduces four primary contributions:

1. `AGENTS.md` — The Agent Constitution

A structured markdown file that lives in your repo and tells your AI agent:

What this project is and how it's structured
What conventions to follow
What mistakes to never repeat
How to behave across sessions

It's not a prompt. It's a persistent identity for your agent.

2. Agent Skills

Reusable, composable skill packages that agents can load on demand. Instead of explaining "how to deploy to Vercel" in every session, you write it once as a skill. The agent reads it when needed.

3. VibeEvals

Evaluation primitives for measuring agent output quality. Not just "did the tests pass?" but "did the agent follow conventions, avoid anti-patterns, and stay within scope?"

4. The 12 Vibing Factors

A checklist of governance principles for AI-assisted development — inspired by the 12-Factor App methodology, adapted for the agentic era.

The Vibecheck Score

Every codebase can be scored on how well it's set up for agentic development. A high Vibecheck Score means your agent will produce better outputs, faster, with fewer corrections.

A low score means you're fighting your tools.

Why Now?

We're at an inflection point. AI coding agents went from "nice to have" to "core workflow" in 18 months. But the tooling to govern them hasn't kept up.

VibeOps is that tooling.

The movement starts here: vibeopscentral.ai

We're building the governance layer for the agentic era. Follow along.

DEV Community: Natu Lauchande