Thinking Before Prompting

Part of the Vibe Coding: Fundamentals course

In the last lesson you saw that AI is a capable but fallible assistant, and that a vague request gets a vague answer. This lesson is the fix for the vague request. The real work of building with AI does not start when you type. It starts a moment earlier, when you decide what you are actually trying to achieve. This is a reading lesson with your AI tutor beside you. There is nothing to build yet.

Here is the mistake almost every beginner makes. They have a rough idea, they open the AI, and they type it exactly as fuzzily as it lives in their head. "Make me a landing page." "Build a signup form." The AI, being agreeable, produces something. It is generic, it is not quite what you meant, and now you are stuck reacting to a thing you did not really ask for. ...