01Scope
Start with one screen and one action, then grow.
Ask for "a platform like Airbnb" in the first prompt.
Small scopes produce code you can verify; giant ones produce code you have to trust.
Best practices
Getting a first version is easy now. Keeping version ten working is the skill. These are the habits we see in people whose projects survive their own success.
Updated 2026-10-02 · 7 min read
Start with one screen and one action, then grow.
Ask for "a platform like Airbnb" in the first prompt.
Small scopes produce code you can verify; giant ones produce code you have to trust.
Describe behaviour: what happens on click, on error, when empty.
Only describe how it should look.
Looks are easy to change later; missing behaviour is what breaks in front of users.
Send one change per prompt and check it.
Bundle five unrelated changes into one message.
When something breaks you know exactly which change did it.
Say what you see and what you expected.
Write "it does not work, fix it".
The model cannot see your screen. A precise symptom is half the fix.
Use version history and export to Git at milestones.
Rely on the chat as your only record.
A known-good version you can return to turns a bad afternoon into a two-minute rollback.
Build with realistic sample data first.
Connect production data on day one.
You can review every screen without risking a real customer's record.
Keep API keys on the server side, in configuration.
Paste keys into the prompt or into front-end code.
Anything in the browser bundle is public, whatever the variable is called.
Read — or have someone read — anything touching money, access or personal data.
Accept auth and payment logic because the preview looks fine.
The preview shows the happy path. Attackers do not take it. See the security checklist.
Click through on a phone and break your own forms.
Test only on your large desktop screen.
Most visitors arrive on a phone, and most bugs live in the unhappy paths.
Bring in a developer when the app becomes critical.
Treat "AI built it" as a reason no one needs to understand it.
Vibe coding gets you to real users. Keeping them is ordinary engineering.
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Start small, change one thing at a time, and publish when it is real.