CHAPTER 01 / 13 · READ → DECIDE → BUILD
Keep the spark. Learn the discipline.
Understand AI-assisted building and choose a project small enough to finish.
What you are learning
A coding assistant can turn a request into files, but someone must decide what those files should do. Your job is to give it evidence, inspect its decisions, and verify the result. You do not need to understand an entire framework on day one. Start by explaining one request, one response, and where one record is stored. When you cannot explain a change, ask the assistant to trace it with concrete inputs before accepting it.
From a weekend experiment to a dependable app
Andrej Karpathy introduced the phrase vibe coding in February 2025 while describing a casual, experimental workflow. This course takes the curiosity of that approach and adds deliberate review. You will keep a small project workbook, build in phases, and collect evidence. A completed lesson records your learning activity; it does not certify that an external app works or is ready for real users.
Your running project: a volunteer task board
Use our fictional TaskTogether board: a coordinator posts tasks and a volunteer claims one. The first release has three abilities: list tasks, claim an available task, and show who owns a claim. One task can have only one claimant. Use fictional users and a disposable repository. You can substitute your own project if its first useful journey is similarly small. Skip payments and real personal data while learning.
Prepare your tools
You need a code editor or coding agent, Git, a runtime that fits your chosen stack, and eventually a test database and hosting account. Aider, Continue, and Cline offer open-source agent options; supported model usage can still cost money. Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, and Codex have their own access and usage terms. Pick one tool you can already access. The labs here help you think and prepare prompts; they do not run a model or deploy your app. For unfamiliar setup commands, ask your agent to use the repository's installed versions and official documentation.
SEE THE DIFFERENCE
A small example. A better decision.
Build me a marketplace with AI, payments, chat, and an admin panel.
Build a fictional volunteer board. A signed-in volunteer can claim one available task. Two people must never successfully claim the same task. Begin with a plan and a test for that rule.
The second brief gives you a bounded journey and a rule you can challenge. You can add features after proving this slice.
Your build steps
- Choose TaskTogether or describe an equally small project.
- Create a disposable repository and record how you will run it locally.
- Choose one coding assistant and check its access, model costs, and tool permissions.
- Write the user outcome and the single rule your first release must protect.
FROM THE PROMPT LIBRARY
A useful brief for this step.
Turn an idea into a testable PRD ↗Stops a vague idea becoming an expensive feature list.Find the real user problem ↗Separates a proposed solution from the pain behind it.Cut an MVP to one useful outcome ↗Reduces a launch scope that cannot fit the available time.All prd & discovery promptsMAKE THE CALL
Think like the reviewer.
BUILD YOUR WORKBOOK
Your project charter
Use the lesson and your project evidence. Your workbook saves privately; keep credentials and private records out. The checks below assess completion of the exercise, not the correctness of an external app.
Before moving on
Loading your workbook…