Figma's Guide to How to Start Vibe Coding

This week, I got featured in Figma's guide to vibe coding alongside other creative directors and designers. The feature highlights something I learned the hard way while building with AI: don't rush to add features before your core is solid.

Building SocialPreviewing, I learned this lesson the hard way. When you're shipping fast with vibe coding tools, it's tempting to keep prompting for "just one more feature." But every addition compounds complexity—bugs get harder to trace, the code gets tangled, and what started as an MVP turns into something unmaintainable. It's easy to get excited and keep prompting for "just one more feature," but I learned that discipline in early iteration saves hours of troubleshooting later.

What Actually Works

The hardest part isn't the prompting—it's saying no to your own ideas. When you're building something new, there's always that voice saying "we should also add this" or "while we're at it." With vibe coding, that voice will kill you. I've found that the prototypes that ship fastest are the ones where I describe exactly one thing I want and refuse to pile on more until that works.

Before you start iterating, actually use what you built. Click through it. Does the core flow work? Is anything broken? Then you know if you're working with a solid foundation or if you're just adding complexity on top of broken scaffolding.

And when you prompt the AI with follow-ups, be specific about what's wrong instead of how to fix it. The AI understands the code better than you do at that point. One targeted request beats five wishes bundled together.

Vibe coding is fundamentally different from traditional dev workflows. It rewards iteration over planning, but only if you stay disciplined about scope. The tools are powerful enough to handle complexity, but that power is exactly why you need to resist using it all at once.

If you're curious about vibe coding and want to learn the full workflow, the Figma resource library has great examples and a breakdown of when vibe coding actually makes sense for your work. But now that you know my biggest mistake, hopefully you can skip the detour and get to shipping.