I've been building things digitally for 15 years. Last week, I watched an app get built in 45 seconds.
The vibe coding wave hit differently this time
Vibe coding tools — Lovable, Cursor, v0, Bolt — have been around for a while. But in early 2026, something shifted. The quality threshold crossed a point where people aren't just prototyping — they're shipping real products with these tools.
Describe your app. Get a working React + Supabase codebase. Deploy it. Whole thing under an hour.
I exited a digital agency after years of building for clients, and I've been building my own SaaS products since — ListingVid (AI video for real estate agents), EST8 (a modern CRM for agents), OhMyLead (lead gen for indie hackers). Each one took months to get to MVP.
Vibe coding would have changed that timeline completely. And that's when it started to scare me.
Here's why I got scared
If I can spin up an MVP in a weekend, so can everyone else. The barrier to building just evaporated.
I spent years learning to code properly. That knowledge doesn't disappear — but its value has shifted. Now it helps me evaluate what AI generates, not generate it myself.
The real skill is knowing what to build. Prompts are just a new syntax for system design.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: when everyone can execute, execution stops being a competitive advantage. The moat moved. It's now about:
- How deep is your understanding of the problem?
- How strong is your existing audience or distribution?
- How fast can you learn from what you shipped?
Speed without direction is just faster failure.
3 takeaways for builders right now
- Execution is no longer the moat. Anyone can ship. Your edge is insight into a real problem.
- Prompt quality = product quality. The clearer you understand the customer, the sharper your prompts, the better the output.
- Distribution beats speed. Building fast means nothing if nobody's watching. Build your audience in parallel.
Vibe coding scared me because it forced me to ask: how much of my time have I spent on the how instead of the who and why?
That's actually useful information.
If you're building in public, I'd love to hear how you're using AI coding tools in your stack — drop a comment or find me on X @lmoncany.
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