Building with AI, Guided by Coaching

Recently, I picked up vibe coding using Vercel. It's part magical, hype busting, and learning.

For those who have not heard of the term "vibe coding", it essentially uses tools like Vercel, Cursor, Windsurf, etc. to build apps by doing nothing much but mostly writing clear prompts instead of traditional code.

No matter how you look at it, vibe coding is real! And I’ve found many parallels with my other passion - coaching.

• Like coaching, vibe coding is less about knowing every framework and more about clarity, structure, and communication.

• You have to be super clear on intent. Vague prompts lead to vague results, just like in a coaching session.

• You've got to learn not to fight AI. Just like with clients, it’s a co-creation process. You guide, you ask, you explore. You don’t control.

• I use questions constantly: “Can you simplify this?”, “What would you do differently?”, “Can you make it easier to maintain?” The quality of your questions drives the quality of insight. If you ask unclear or wrong questions, the coaching session could spin in circles.

• Vibe coding goes wrong often. So, you have to be able to roll back and start again. Clients in coaching sessions have to be challenged when their narrative is not helping them get unblocked. A reframe helps open up possibilities.

• Don't stack too many things together. Ask the LLM one thing to do. Coaching also does well with super crisp and precise single-intention questions.

• You have to be comfortable with ambiguity. Coaching trained me to sit with not knowing. To try something, see what comes up, and adjust. That’s literally how vibe coding works.