Have you thought about what you actually mean when you tell someone you vibe code? The term gets thrown around a lot, but I think there’s a meaningful distinction worth spelling out. Here’s how I think about it.

Vibe coding, to me, doesn’t mean you’re using an LLM because at this point, it’s hard to avoid using an LLM no matter what type of work you’re doing. The distinction isn’t about the tools, it’s about the intent and the stakes.

Vibe Coding vs. Engineering Work

To me, vibe coding is when I have a simple idea and I want to build a self-contained app that expresses that idea. There’s no spec, no requirements doc, no code review. Just an idea and the energy to make it real.

Engineering work, whether that’s context engineering, spec-driven development, or the old-fashioned way; is when I’m working on open source or paid work. There’s structure, there are standards, and the code needs to hold up over time.

Both are fun. But I take vibe coding less seriously than engineering work.

Vibe coding is the creative playground. Engineering is the craft.

My Setup

All my vibe coded apps live in a single repository. The code isn’t public, but the results are. You can find all my ideas at logan.center.

I have it set up so that every time I add a new folder, it automatically gets its own subdomain.

I’m using Caddy for routing and deploying to Railway. I have an idea, create the app, and boom — it’s live.

I would like to open source a template version of this setup so other people could deploy to something like Railway easily, but I haven’t gotten around to building that yet. One day.

For my repository, I decided it would be fun to build everything in Svelte instead of React.

That’s why you may have seen a bunch of posts from me lately about learning how Svelte works. It’s been fun because the framework stays out of your way and lets you move fast, which is exactly what you want when you’re chasing the vibe.

So, for me, vibe coding is a specific thing: low stakes, high creativity, self-contained apps, and the freedom to just build without overthinking it.

I mean I’m not crazy, I still have testing setup…