a vibe coding guide from someone with 3 year vibe coding experinece

i've been vibe coding with ai since the early days. after thousands of prompts and a bunch of real projects, i learned that it's not just "ask and it builds"—it's about how you guide it. here's what actually works if you're a dev who's never tried it before: 1. clarity matters if your input is fuzzy, the output will be chaos. saying "make me a dashboard" gets you random components. saying "make a dashboard with a sidebar, stats card at the top, and a table for users" gets you something usable. clear input = clean output. 2. ui before code i used to describe layouts in words—it always came out wrong. now i grab a screenshot or template and say "replicate this layout." the ai nails it faster, and i end up with reusable components instead of messy one-offs. 3. small prompts beat big prompts dumping "build the whole auth system" overwhelms the model. splitting it into signup → login → reset password gets consistent results. smaller steps = fewer hallucinations. 4. debugging as collaboration when the ai gets stuck, don't keep saying "fix it." instead, ask "what logs should i add?" or "what info do you need?" let it guide you in setting up the investigation. once you feed back the right outputs, it usually locks onto the issue quickly. you're not handing over the bug—you're solving it together. 5. be explicit, stay in control the worst mistake is trusting the ai blindly. i only ask it to do things i could reason through myself. if it writes jwt auth, i make sure i understand what's happening and why. the ai is a fast junior dev, but you still have to be the lead. that's also why i built this tool. it helps you learn while you build by explaining what the ai just did and even quizzing you when you commit, so you don't just ship faster—you actually level up your practical software knowledge along the way. vibe coding isn't about letting ai take over. it's about guiding it, staying in control, and coming out both with working code and with sharper skills.