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Agentic engineering · Essay

Vibe coding, with taste

Building by feel is legitimate. Shipping by feel alone is not.

7 min · Updated Aug 2026

Vibe coding gets mocked because the worst version of it is real: unread diffs, unowned decisions, an app nobody can extend. The best version is something else entirely — a designer's loop applied to software.

What the good version looks like

  • You hold the intent; the agent holds the syntax.
  • You review the shape of every change, even when you skim the lines.
  • You keep a reference — a page, a product, a feeling — and judge against it.
  • You stop at good, not at first-working.

Three habits worth stealing

  1. 1
    Name the feeling before the feature

    "Calm, expensive, slightly editorial" gives more usable direction than any component list.

  2. 2
    Keep one thing sacred

    Pick the element you love — a headline, a chart, a transition — and forbid changes to it. Everything else can move.

  3. 3
    Ship the ugly version early

    The fastest way to find out what you actually want is to look at something wrong on a real screen.

Still wondering something?

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