Vibe prototyping · AI-Native Product Building

Principle

Vibe prototyping is deliberate ignorance in service of speed. You temporarily accept shallow data, fake auth, and happy-path flows so you can learn shape before you pay the tax of ownership.

The skill is not prompting — it is knowing what you are allowed not to know yet, and writing that down before the demo seduces you.

The decision

DEC_005

  Hypothesis (1 sentence)
│
▼
Time-boxed vibe build (hours–days)
│
▼
Demo to reality ──► falsified? ──yes──► kill or pivot
│                    │
│                    no
│                    ▼
└────────────► sharpen hypothesis / next layer

Each prototype session should end with a written falsifier, not a screenshot folder.

Rules of the vibe session

Name the falsifier first — what observation would change your mind?
One workflow, not a product — cut nav, cut settings, cut “admin.”
Fake data on purpose — label it fake in the UI or README so no one confuses seed rows with truth.
Record the checklist — steps a user takes, not a Loom of you clicking fast.
End with a retro — what surprised you, what the tool fought, what ticket you’d open in a real repo.

Workflow

Copy templates/spec-stub.md — outcome, non-goals, human-owned decisions.
Build the smallest path that tests the falsifier.
Show one external person (not your co-founder) — watch where they hesitate.
Log signal: behavior, not praise.
Either iterate in vibe, run a validation test (Chapter 04), or graduate toward ownership (Chapter 07).

Tooling

Lovable, Bolt, v0, Figma Make — pick by iteration speed for your falsifier, not by Twitter hype. Swap tools freely; keep the hypothesis stable.

Common mistakes

Polishing UI before the workflow is understood.
Treating generated CRUD as a data model — it’s a sketch.
Adding “just one more screen” instead of running the falsifier.
No time box — vibe sessions that last weeks are stealth product denial.

Artifacts

Session log: hypothesis · falsifier · time box · signal · next action.
templates/migration-checklist.md — when you approach the leave-prototype gate.