Comment by macNchz

I’ve always said this as well, having done lots and lots of early stage building and prototyping, and suffering plenty of proto-duction foibles, however my view has shifted on this a lot in the last year or so.

With current models I’m able to throw together fully working web app prototypes so quickly and iterate often-sweeping UI and architectural changes so readily that I’m finding it has changed my whole workflow. The idea of trying to keep things low-fidelity at the start is predicated on the understanding that changes later in the process are much more difficult or expensive, which I think is increasingly no longer the case in many circumstances. Having a completely working prototype and then totally changing how it works in just a few sentences is really quite something.

The key to sustainability in this pattern, in my opinion, is not letting the AI dictate project structure or get too far ahead of your own understanding/oversight of the general architecture. That’s a balancing act to be sure, since purely vibe-coding is awfully tempting, but it’s still far too easy to wind up with a big ball of wax that neither human nor AI can further improve.