Vibe Coding, For Real — book cover
The Book

Vibe Coding, For Real

From Demo to Live App, the Step-by-Step Method for Builders Who Hit the Wall

You opened Cursor. You typed "build me an app." Something appeared. It looked real. You tried to add login — and the whole thing fell apart. This book is the bridge between a demo and a shippable product.

Free with Kindle Unlimited

Or buy it: Kindle $9.99 · Paperback $19.99

Vibe Coding, For Real teaches the Blueprint Method — a repeatable 8-step process you apply twelve times across the book, on the same project, until it becomes muscle memory. You don't write a single line of code. The AI writes everything. Your job is to specify, push back, and verify. By the end, you'll have shipped a real CRM for independent artisans: clients, job sites, quotes with PDF export, multi-user authentication, dashboard, payments, deployed live. Same stack as a real production SaaS — Next.js, Supabase, Stripe, Vercel.

What you ship by the end of the book

12
Chapters
70+
Prompts
~15h
Focused work
1
Shipped SaaS

A working CRM · multi-tenant auth · PDF quotes · Stripe payments · live in production

Who this book is for

You tried “vibe coding” and got a beautiful demo that collapsed when a real user touched it
You don’t know how to code, but you’ll read carefully and push back when the AI does something stupid
You want to ship a real product, not collect another 47 unfinished tutorials
You’ve never used the terminal, Git, Supabase, or Vercel — perfect, that’s the starting line
Senior developers who want production-grade specs — read Prompt Contracts instead, it’s the advanced framework
People who want a magic button — there is no shortcut, the method takes practice
Lovable / Bolt loyalists who never want to leave a cloud builder — this book uses real tools the AI can edit directly

The Blueprint Method

8 steps, applied 12 times, until it becomes muscle memory

01 · GLOBAL SPEC

Broad description of the feature, in plain words. No tech jargon yet.

02 · IMPLICATIONS

Ask the AI what this implies technically — database, routes, security.

03 · DETAILED SPEC

Fields, validation, edge cases, error states — written in the spec, not discovered in prod.

04 · BUILD

Hand the spec to the AI. Code appears.

05 · EXPLAIN

Ask the AI to explain what it built and why. You learn while it talks.

06 · VERIFY

Happy path, edge cases, and "what could go wrong" — before a user finds out.

07 · WHAT BREAKS

Topic-specific traps the AI walks straight into if you don't stop it.

08 · NON-REGRESSION

Re-run the earlier chapters' features. Nothing silently broke.

13 chapters, one shipped app, zero filler

0
Introduction — Deck vs House
Why your AI demo collapsed the moment a real user touched it — and the method that fixes it
1
Setup & First Deploy
GitHub, Supabase, Vercel — your app is live within the first chapter
2
How a Web App Works
Frontend, backend, database — every concept explained without a single line of code in the book
3
Designing Your Interface
From sketch to clickable layout — design before code, every time
4
Your First Feature: Clients
The Blueprint Method, applied for the first time — full CRUD, your way
5
Data That Flows: Job Sites & Quotes
Relations, validation, and PDF export — the AI writes it, you steer it
6
Authentication
Real login, password reset, email verification — Supabase Auth done right
7
Multi-Tenant Data
Row Level Security — the single hardest thing to get right, demystified
8
Testing
Make the AI test its own code before you even look at it
9
Dashboard & Polish
Charts, navigation, mobile — the difference between a demo and a product
10
Payments
Stripe checkout, webhooks, subscription state — money flows in
11
Going Live
Domain, monitoring, error tracking — your CRM is in production
12
When Things Break
Where the method runs out — honest limits and what to do next

The stack you'll learn to ship on

Real production tools, not toy environments. The same stack as a paid SaaS.

Next.js
App framework
Supabase
DB + Auth + RLS
Stripe
Payments
Vercel
Hosting
"A demo is a deck. A real app is a house. Same wood, completely different process."

About the author

Phil writes on Medium under @rentierdigital. 20 years in software, from French banks to a shrimp fishery in Madagascar. Now a solo developer shipping SaaS products with AI from wherever the Wi-Fi holds.

Stack: Next.js, Convex, Clerk, Vercel, n8n. Self-hosted AI agents. Everything in this book has been deployed, broken in production, fixed, and deployed again — twice over.

Stop collecting tutorials. Build something real.

Get Vibe Coding, For Real on Amazon

Free with Kindle Unlimited

Or buy it: Kindle $9.99 · Paperback $19.99

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to know how to code?

No. You don't write a single line of code in this book. The AI writes everything. Your job is to specify clearly, push back when the AI suggests something stupid, and verify that what it built actually works. That is the entire skill the book teaches.

How is this different from Prompt Contracts?

Vibe Coding, For Real is the on-ramp — one project, walked end to end, designed for someone who has never used Git, Supabase, or Vercel. Prompt Contracts is the advanced framework, written for developers who already ship and want production-grade specs. Start here if you're new, read Prompt Contracts after.

Which AI tools does the method work with?

The examples use Claude Code. Cursor and Codex CLI work just as well. The Blueprint Method is tool-agnostic: it teaches what to say, in what order, and how to verify — the underlying AI can change.

Is there a companion repo?

Yes — the full CRM is open source. Every prompt published in the book produced the code that runs there, and every code path is e2e tested. If you get stuck on a chapter, the repo is your reference implementation.