Vibe coding — describing software into existence and riding whatever the model gives you — is genuinely here. My résumé has an app builder in it partly to make that point: type a sentence, get a working game. The barrier to starting software has collapsed. Wonderful. Now let me tell you about the barrier that didn't move.
Construction already ran this experiment
My day job is a construction portfolio, an industry that has known for a century that the hard part isn't building — it's agreeing on what's being built. That's why change orders exist: a formal, priced, signed acknowledgment that the scope moved. No handshake amnesia. No "while you're at it." Paper trail or it didn't happen.
Vibe coding has no change orders. Every prompt is a scope change nobody prices. "Simple inventory tracker" becomes multi-user becomes needs-auth becomes syncs-with-QuickBooks, and each step feels free because the code appears instantly. The code was never the cost. The cost is the maintenance, the data model you locked in on day two, and the expectations you set with whoever's paying.
How I vibe-code without the hangover
- Write the scope sentence first. One sentence, what it does, who it's for. When the prompt drifts from the sentence, that's a change order — decide on purpose.
- Data model by hand, vibes for the rest. The blueprint is the building. Schemas are cheap to draw and brutal to migrate.
- Timebox the magic. If generation is instant, iteration is where the week goes. Budget iterations like you'd budget concrete.
The models made writing code fast. They made deciding what to build exactly zero percent faster. That ratio is the whole modern software business.