TL;DR — I’m a long-time dev trying vibe coding: ship small, learn loud, repeat. Here’s what that means to me and what I plan to write about here.
Why a reboot (after years of shipping)
I’ve shipped for long enough to see tools and trends loop back with new names. What didn’t change: shipping is still hard when perfection creeps in. I used to over-plan, under-ship, and miss the moment.
So I’m trying something deliberately simple: vibe coding.
What vibe coding means to me
Not chaos, not cowboy coding. It’s a posture:
- Smaller surfaces → reduce scope until a demo fits in a tweet-length sentence.
- Shorter loops → merge before it’s pretty; write the postmortem while it’s fresh.
- Evidence over ego → telemetry, user notes, quick A/Bs.
- Narrate the work → build-in-public notes beat polished silence.
My tiny rules (so I don’t backslide)
- 48h rule: if it’s not shipped in two days, I cut scope until it is.
- One metric per week: pick exactly one “did we move it?” number.
- Write the README first; if it reads confusing, the scope is confusing.
- When stuck, publish a question instead of hiding the branch.
What I’ll share here on DEV
Short, honest notes as I practice:
- How I pick “tweet-sized” scopes and still keep a roadmap
- Checklists for shipping faster without breaking trust
- Postmortems (good and bad) with the actual tradeoffs
- Tooling that keeps me honest: tests, feature flags, and telemetry
If any of this sounds useful, follow along and tell me what you want to see first. I’ll happily write it.
PS: what I’m building (soft mention)
I’m also building DocBeacon — a document sharing and tracking tool with heatmap insights to see what readers actually read (think: beyond per-page stats). If that problem interests you, my profile has more info. Happy to swap notes.
Top comments (5)
Love this, thanks for sharing.
Do you have a go-to Vibe Coding "stack" of tools you generally use?
Thanks! I keep the stack boring on purpose—tools that get out of the way:
Planning: README-first
Code/CI: GitHub + GitHub Actions
Demos: Vercel preview deploys
Notes: a 3-bullet decision log (context → option → why now)
Habits > tools, but this combo keeps loops tight
:)
One more big lever for me is AI pair-programming
“Vibe coding” actually sounds like the antidote to perfection paralysis. Shipping fast, narrating the process, and trimming scope till it fits in a tweet - that’s a discipline a lot of us devs need. Curious to see how DocBeacon fits into this mindset.
Thanks—exactly. I’m applying vibe coding to DocBeacon by scoping each feature to one reader outcome, shipping thin slices (eg., section-level heatmaps → follow-up timing), and narrating the trade-offs as I go.