You don’t need to learn that entire vibe coding checklist before you start
A long list of tools can make a small project feel impossible. Here’s how to work out which advice matters now and what can wait.
By Jeff Carstens · Building with AI · Published 2026-10-23
Picture this: you want to build a booking page for a school event. You open Instagram, save a post about vibe coding, and suddenly your homework includes Docker, Kubernetes, three databases, and something called a reverse proxy. The booking page hasn’t changed. Your confidence has.
A list can be accurate and still be unhelpful
There are good reasons to learn how software works. If you put an app online, other people can run into the mistakes you missed. If it holds their information, those mistakes can matter a great deal. Someone pointing that out is doing you a favor.
The trouble starts when advice for several years of building gets squeezed into a single slide labeled ‘things every vibe coder must know.’ A term being useful somewhere doesn’t make it a requirement for your first project. The missing piece is usually context: useful for what, and at what point?
Vibe coding means different things to different people. Here, I’m talking about using AI to help create software, including when you can’t write all of the code yourself. That can be a way into learning. It also leaves you with work to do: deciding what to build, checking the result, and knowing when you need help.
Put the advice next to the project
Take that school event page. If it only shows a date, a location, and a link to an existing booking service, you may have no reason to add your own database. A database stores and retrieves information. It becomes relevant when your project needs to keep its own bookings, availability, or other changing records.
Git keeps a history of changes to your files. Saving your work and being able to get back to a working version is useful early. Kubernetes coordinates applications running in containers across machines. It solves a different kind of problem. Seeing both words on the same carousel doesn’t mean they deserve the same place on your to-do list.
Try asking one question about each unfamiliar term: ‘What would go wrong in my project if I didn’t use this?’ If you can’t get a clear answer, you’ve found something to investigate rather than an automatic item to install. Ask the AI to explain it using your actual project, then check the explanation against the tool’s documentation when you’re making a decision.
The point where the answer changes
A practice page on your laptop is a forgiving place to make mistakes. Use invented names and bookings, try things, and see what breaks. You don’t need to turn every experiment into a production system.
A public booking app is a different commitment. Now you need to check that a full event stops accepting bookings, that two people can’t accidentally take the final place, and that one visitor can’t see another visitor’s details. You also need a way to recover information and someone who will respond if the app stops working.
That’s where ‘I don’t know yet’ should lead to a next step. It might mean reading a lesson, testing a smaller version, using an established service, or asking someone experienced to review the work. Confidence is useful when it gets you started. Evidence is what helps you decide whether other people should depend on the result.
Give yourself a smaller next step
Before saving another checklist, write down the one thing your project should let a person do. Build the smallest version of that task with sample information. Click through it yourself. Try an empty field, a wrong input, and a narrow phone screen. Save a version that works before asking for the next change.
When you hit a limit, learn the concept that explains it. That gives the new word somewhere to live. ‘Permissions’ is easier to understand when you’ve just discovered that a visitor can open the organizer’s page.
I want this blog’s recurring question to be: ‘Do I actually need to know this?’ Sometimes the answer will be yes, before you launch. Sometimes it will be later. Either way, the answer should help you make a decision. You shouldn’t have to pass a vocabulary exam to begin.
Jeff runs SchoolHouse Logistics and writes about building with AI and choosing useful tools for schools.