Vibe

A field guide, not a manifesto

Working with coding agents

Claude Code, Codex, and the habits that make a model-driven workflow fast without being reckless. Every lesson here was paid for by a real mistake on a real codebase: a monorepo of small public apps, a control plane for a handful of machines, and a mobile robot. 17 lessons, 3 things to drive yourself.

Start at the beginning →

How to read this

The agent is a fast engineer with no memory. Everything follows from that.

Write things down. Rules the agent should follow live in files it reads at start, not in your head.

Spend context on purpose. Every tool result is re-read on every turn. The budget is the session.

Look before you ship. Green tests are not a rendered page. A rule with no test will be broken.

Part 0

Mindset

  1. What vibe coding actually means The term is a joke. The practice is not.
  2. A fast engineer with no memory The one mental model that explains every rule that follows
Part 1

The workspace

  1. Write the constitution The file the agent reads before it does anything, and how to keep it honest
  2. One task, one worktree, one session The isolation unit that makes parallel agents safe instead of terrifying
  3. Ports, the LAN, and the phone in your pocket Small conventions that stop 'why is this app dead' from happening weekly
Part 2

Context and cost

  1. Context is the budget Every tool result is re-read on every turn. Spend accordingly. drive it
  2. Timeouts, stdin, and background jobs Seventy-four hours of waiting, found in thirty days of logs
Part 3

Trust, but verify

  1. Look at it before you call it done Zero type errors, 124 passing tests, clean audit, successful build. Broken page.
  2. A rule is a test Nine apps shipped with prose that said 'drag the slider' and no slider
  3. The misleading 200 The CDN says OK. The page is last week's.
Part 4

Git with an agent

  1. Stage by name Two production regressions, one cause: git add -A drive it
  2. Preview before prod The branch gets a URL. The human gets the URL. Main gets the merge.
Part 5

More than one model

  1. A second engineer, not a second opinion Claude directs, Codex executes, and a table decides which is which drive it
Part 6

Memory and continuity

  1. State files, the task board, and memory Three layers that let a forgetful colleague pick up where they left off
  2. Skills turn a ritual into a command Nearly every skill on this machine is a postmortem with a name
Part 7

The physical world

  1. Agents and hardware What changes when the code moves a motor
Part 8

Safety

  1. Secrets, pasted text, and blast radius The agent has your shell. Decide in advance what that means.