Vibe Coding: Trust the Flow, Fear the Roadmap

How I built a life management system with AI — and what I learned when it actually worked.

June 2025

I built a life management system in three weeks. With AI. It works.

That's either genius or extremely well-organized chaos. Six months later, I'm still not sure which.

Vibe coding is building software by riffing with AI until something real emerges. It's like jazz, but with code.

You throw out an idea. The model throws back code. You tweak, iterate, argue, and repeat until suddenly you have something that runs your actual life.

I don't have a deep coding background. I have twenty years of product management, a lot of opinions about what tools should do, and a willingness to stay up too late asking Claude to explain what just broke.

The Multi-LLM Circus

Vibe coding gets wilder when you invite more AI to the party. My build involved:

Claude — Product docs, code architecture, and the voice of reason when I wanted to add "just one more feature"

Gemini — Branding, design system, wireframes, turning my brain dumps into something coherent

ChatGPT — Email integration and the weird edge cases

While they coded, I bounced between them — testing, feeding context, trying to keep the whole circus from running off in different directions.

The Monolith I Didn't See Coming

From a product perspective, I was killing it. Documentation, use cases, UX flows — all solid.

But under the hood? I was building a monolith.

I didn't recognize it because I had no real architecture background. My instinct was to fix the next visible user-facing issue instead of stopping to consider the infrastructure. The front end sparkled. The foundation was... ambitious.

app.py: 3,600 lines. One file. Everything.

Around week three, the cracks started showing. Not in the UI — that was still shiny — but deep in the guts. So I started the refactor.

After:

app/
  core/
    auth/      ← Authentication
    tasks/     ← Task management
    projects/  ← Project management
    ai/        ← AI integration
  shared/      ← Common utilities
  api/         ← REST API

This wasn't just a code re-org. It was me admitting I'd been building a skyscraper out of pool noodles and needed steel beams.

The Part Where I Lost It

I didn't expect the mental tax.

Building something this large in three weeks meant my brain was constantly context-switching. Product manager. QA. Prompt engineer. Debugger. Every moment was a decision or a "what did I just break?"

Eventually, I admitted to Claude that I was overwhelmed.

"I need you to slow down. Explain what we're doing. Give me pros and cons for each choice. One step at a time."

That changed everything. Claude still wrote the code, but became my technical translator and pacing coach. The vibe was still there — but now it had guardrails.

What I Actually Learned

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Vibe coding is a discovery tool, not a delivery method. It's incredible for finding what you want to build. Then you need to actually engineer it.

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It really does take a village. Mine just happens to be four different LLMs with different strengths.

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Brutal honesty with your AI unlocks better work. Saying "I'm lost" got me better help than pretending I understood.

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Product thinking still matters. You can vibe your way to code, but someone has to keep it pointed toward something real.

Six Months Later

Clarineffable still runs my life. It's been refactored twice more. The monolith is gone. The AI assistant I bolted on actually understands my documents now.

I'm still vibe coding — just with better instincts about when to slow down and build something solid.

Trust the vibe. Clean the commit history.

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