Vibe Coding ‑ Notes from the First Try

You can build a working blog in a weekend.
I did it using Cursor and an AI pair programmer.

What worked

• Speed
  I had a template running in minutes.
  Live reload kept the loop short.

• Focused prompts
  Short, clear requests gave better code.
  One task at a time.

• Hands‑on fixes
  When type errors showed up, I jumped in and patched them fast.
  No waiting for another answer.

What hurt

• Out‑of‑date examples
  The assistant knows only what was public at its last crawl.
  New package versions need manual checks.

• Over‑eager edits
  I asked for a sidebar tweak; it rewired other files and broke the build.
  I learned to halt the run early.

• Constraint drift
  “Do not add package X.”
  Ten minutes later, package X popped back.
  Keep an eye on package.json.

• TypeScript drift
  As the codebase grew, generated types lagged.
  I had to prune old code.

Pro tips

• Write a .nvmrc early.

• Add a smoke test that runs next build before each commit or push.

• Keep prompt.md, rules file or notepad with all active constraints.

• Stop the assistant if it touches files outside the task.

• Commit small and often.

Final thoughts

AI pair‑programming is an interesting shortcut, but it won’t replace real craft For now.
You still need multiple projects to master the flow, bigger teams get messy, and the output quality matches the developer’s own skills--otherwise you may end up with a basic scaffold that you could have built faster with a simple git clone.

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Originally published at letanure.dev