I love vibe coding. There is something powerful about opening an editor, following intuition, and letting momentum carry you forward.
But after shipping multiple products, I learned this the hard way.
Starting with pure vibe coding from day one is one of the fastest ways to create long term chaos.
Here is why it usually fails in practice.
1. Vibe coding optimizes for speed, not structure
When you start with vibes only, everything feels fast at first.
You skip architecture.
You skip naming.
You skip state design.
You skip data modeling.
It feels productive. Until you need to:
- Add billing
- Add permissions
- Add emails
- Add analytics
- Or just debug one complex bug
At that point, every change becomes a minefield.
2. Refactors become emotional, not technical
With a weak foundation, refactoring stops being a technical decision and turns into emotional resistance:
“I will just hack it for now.”
“I will clean this later.”
“I cannot touch this file anymore.”
That is when projects quietly die. Not from lack of ideas, but from invisible technical debt.
3. What finally worked for me
What changed everything was flipping the order:
- First, lock a boring but rock solid foundation
- Then, vibe on top of it freely
Once auth, billing, emails, SEO, analytics, and deployment were stable, I could vibe code with zero fear. I could experiment without breaking the company.
Speed became sustainable.
4. Vibe coding works best inside guardrails
The best workflow I found looks like this:
- Rigid foundation
- Flexible feature layer
- Fast iteration on business logic
- Safe deletion and rewrites
Inside those guardrails, vibe coding becomes a superpower instead of a liability.
5. How I personally avoid rebuilding the same base now
After rebuilding the same SaaS base too many times, I turned my internal setup into a reusable starter so I would never have to fight this battle again. That eventually became Sabo.
I now start every product with a stable base and then vibe code 100 percent of the product logic on top of it. The difference in stress and shipping speed is dramatic.
If you are curious, this is the setup I now start from:
getsabo
6. The real takeaway
Vibe coding is not the enemy.
Starting without a foundation is.
If your base is solid, vibe coding becomes fun, fast, and safe.
If your base is shaky, vibe coding just accelerates your future pain.
Question for the forum
Have you ever had a project die because the foundation could not keep up with the speed of your ideas?
Or do you still prefer starting fully from vibes and refactoring later?
I am genuinely curious how others here balance freedom vs structure.
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