Welcome & How to Use This Book
What vibe coding changes, and why the first version should stay small.
In this book
- Name the layers in an app an AI coding tool just generated
- Read a repository and recognize the stack from its files
- Tell a laptop demo apart from something that can stay online
- Know what to ask a host before the first deploy
- Start with an MVP: a single-page app, one process, and a SQLite file
You can ship an app without picking the stack
Vibe coding is building by describing what you want. A tool such as Cursor, Copilot, v0, Lovable, or Bolt writes the files, installs libraries, and often gets a page working on your laptop. That is a real way to build. It does not remove the stack. It chooses one for you, usually the one the model has seen most often.
The stack is still what has to run in production: the browser code, the server process, the database, the domain, and the machine those live on. When something breaks at 11 p.m., the useful question is which layer failed, not which prompt produced the file.
The tool wrote the code. You still own where it runs, who can log in, where the data lives, and what it costs when more people show up. The first version should be the smallest stack that can take a real booking.
Build the MVP before you build the platform
An MVP — a minimum viable product — is the first version a real person can use. For Workshop Co. that is short: see the classes, reserve a seat, and let the owner see who is coming. It is not payments, a mobile app, and a database cluster.
AI coding tools often skip that and emit a production-shaped stack, because tutorials look like Next.js plus Postgres plus Docker. You can ask for less. A single-page application in the browser, one small program on the server, and a SQLite database file are a complete stack for a studio with a few dozen students. Chapter 6 is that decision in full. The chapters before it teach you to read whatever the tool generated, including the heavy version.
What this book does not require
Books 1–7 teach infrastructure from domains through cloud. Book 8 is HTTP APIs. Book 9 is language models. This book stands alone. When a chapter mentions DNS, HTTPS, or API keys, it tells you the idea you need here and points at the deeper book if you want it.
Workshop Co.
- Who
- A class studio in St. Albert. The owner is not a developer.
- What they built
- A weekend booking site: class list, “reserve a spot,” and a simple admin page. An AI coding tool wrote it.
- What works today
npm run devon a laptop. One test booking. A.envfile the tool created.- What the tool generated
- Next.js and Postgres. More machine than a first class list needs.
- The MVP
- A single-page class list, one server program, and a SQLite file named
studio.db. - What this book is for
- Reading that project, naming every layer, and deciding what a host has to provide so the small version can leave the laptop.
How to use the chapters
Each chapter has a short exercise and an answer you can open. Do the exercise before you open it. The capstone hands you the Workshop Co. repository listing and asks you to name the stack and the hosting requirements in writing. There is no login and no grade.
Before Chapter 2
Name three decisions an AI coding tool usually does not make for you, even when the app runs on your laptop.
Answer
Any three of these count: which computer it will run on in production, the domain name, the TLS certificate, who is allowed to log in as admin, where the database file or server lives, how backups work, what happens when two people book the last seat, and what the monthly bill becomes if traffic grows. The tool can suggest all of those. It cannot operate them.