Mastering Vibe-Coding: Five Essential Rules to Prevent Coding Catastrophes

After dedicating two years to vibe-coding, I’ve developed strategies to navigate the precarious waters of programming without succumbing to chaos. Here are five crucial rules that can help you avoid the pitfalls that often lead to endless loops and unmanageable code.

1. Embrace the 3-Strike Rule: A Lesson in Resilience

One of the first rules I learned the hard way is the need to recognize when to step back. If an AI tool fails to resolve an issue after three attempts, it’s time to pause. My codebase once ballooned from 2,000 to 18,000 lines of code while I futilely attempted to fix a simple dropdown menu. By the end, the AI had encased my application in multiple try-catch blocks, contributing to the mess.

Instead of persisting down a rabbit hole, try this:

• Take a screenshot of the malfunctioning UI.
• Initiate a new chat session with the AI.
• Clearly articulate what you want, rather than focusing on what’s broken.
• Allow the AI to create that component anew.

2. Acknowledge the Limitations of Context Windows

There’s a little-known truth: after a series of around ten exchanges, AI begins to lose track of your project specifics. I once found myself with an AI assistant convinced my application was a recipe site due to the extended back-and-forth on persona switching in our AI voice platform.

To prevent this confusion, I recommend:

• Regularly saving your working code to a separate document.
• Starting fresh every 8-10 messages to keep the context clear.
• Sharing only the relevant problematic code.
• Including a concise one-liner that explains the app’s function.

Implementing this approach has proven to reduce my debugging time significantly—by approximately 70%.

3. Simplify Communication with the “Explain Like I’m Five” Test

If you can’t simplify the issue in a single sentence, you may be heading for trouble. I once wasted six hours grappling with vague phrases like “the data flow is odd, and state management is questionable but the UI sometimes fails to refresh correctly.”

To clarify problems, I now enforce myself to describe issues plainly, using phrases such as:

• “The button fails to save user data.”
• “The page crashes upon refresh.”
• “Image upload results in undefined.”

Clear,