Frequently Asked Questions

A structured set of 17 markdown skills that walk an AI coding agent (like Anthropic's Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex) from a rough idea or partial prototype through to a deployed, MVP-quality web application. The skills cover discovery, design, authentication, AI integration, monetization, regulatory compliance, accessibility, security, performance, deployment, custom domains, end-to-end testing, ship checklists, and founder deliverables like pitch decks. Together they encode what a senior engineer would do silently while building — so you don't skip the things that matter.

No. The Vibe Coder's Guide is designed for non-engineers building real products with AI agents. The agent does the implementation. You make the product decisions — what it does, who it's for, what it should look like. The agent asks you the right questions and writes the code.

That said, you'll learn fast as you go. By the time you ship your first MVP using this, you'll understand terms like auth, env vars, and deploy not because you crammed them but because you used them in context.

Agent Skills (vibe-coder-skills.zip) is the markdown skill bundle. Drop it into your AI agent's skills directory and the agent reads SKILL.md to begin. Use this when you have an existing project you want to harden into MVP shape, or when you want full control over how your new project is scaffolded.

Project Template (vibe-mvp-starter.zip) is a Next.js + TypeScript + Tailwind + DaisyUI scaffold with every feature from the skills pre-built and toggleable through environment variables. The skills are bundled inside it. Use this when you're starting fresh and want a working codebase from minute one.

Both are free and MIT-licensed.

Both are excellent and the skills work in either. The choice is mostly about company preference and working style.

• Claude Code (Anthropic) is more conversational. It explains its reasoning more, plans longer-horizon work step by step, and tends to push back on questionable decisions. Good for learning and for non-technical founders who want context.
• Codex (OpenAI) is faster on focused tasks. Tighter loop, less commentary, more code. Good for developers who already know what they want and want the agent to just do it.

We recommend trying both. They're both free at the entry tier. After 2–3 sessions you'll have a real preference.

Yes. The skills are MIT-licensed. The project template is MIT-licensed. This site is supported by a small AdSense placement on the blog. There's no paid tier, no subscription, no upsell.

The third-party services the skills recommend (Vercel hosting, OpenAI API, Resend email, Stripe payments, a custom domain) have their own pricing. The Vibe Coder's Guide skills are explicit about flagging cost before any paid action so you can opt out.

Yes. Download just the skills (not the project template) and drop them into your existing project's AI agent skills directory. When you ask the agent to read SKILL.md, it treats each skill as a checkpoint — it audits what's already done in your codebase and only does the work that's missing. You won't get the agent re-doing things that already work.

About 30 minutes from "I have an idea" to "it's deployed at a URL," for a project that uses the project template and follows the agent's lead through all 17 skills. The breakdown is roughly: 10 minutes of decisions you make (idea, audience, design choices), 20 minutes of agent execution (writing code, running tests, deploying).

Larger or more nuanced products take longer — an MVP with custom data models, complex AI features, or compliance requirements (GDPR, HIPAA) might take 2–4 hours. Still small compared to building any of this from scratch.

The agent is designed to dialogue with you. If you're stuck, tell the agent. Most often the agent will either explain what's blocked, propose a fix, or ask you a clarifying question.

If the issue is bigger than that — the agent itself is misbehaving, the skills are wrong, or something in the project template doesn't work — email privacy@vibecodersguidetomvp.help (also handles general feedback) or open an issue on the GitHub repo.

A term that emerged in 2024-2025 for non-engineers (or part-time engineers) who build software primarily by collaborating with AI coding agents instead of writing code by hand. The vibe is "describe what you want, the agent makes it." We use the term affectionately. The Vibe Coder's Guide exists because vibe coding is now genuinely viable for shipping real products — what was missing was the rubric for turning prototypes into shippable MVPs.

No. Both Claude Code and Codex run as desktop applications on your machine, talking to their respective APIs (Anthropic for Claude, OpenAI for Codex). All the code, all the credentials, all the project files live on your laptop. The Vibe Coder's Guide site you're reading right now is purely informational; we host no agent execution and have no access to your project.

The skills explicitly tell the agent to store credentials in .env.local on your machine and to never hardcode secrets in source. The agent never sends your project data to us. Your project files stay on your computer.

The third-party services your project uses (OpenAI for AI features, Resend for email, etc.) have their own privacy practices. The skills' compliance pass (sub-skill 08) generates a privacy policy that lists every third party your specific project sends data to.

For data this site itself collects: see our Privacy Policy.

Completely yours. The skills and project template are MIT-licensed, which means you can use them for anything — commercial products, side projects, client work — without restriction. The code your agent generates by following the skills is yours, governed by the license of any individual library it uses (almost always permissive: MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD).

The skills are versioned via git on GitHub. To pull updates: re-clone the repo and replace your local copy. Or watch the repo for releases. The skills rarely change in breaking ways — updates usually add new sub-skills or refine existing ones.

Yes. The skills are plain markdown. Any AI agent that can read files in a workspace can read them. Claude Code and Codex are explicit first-class targets because their skills directory conventions (.claude/skills/ and .codex/skills/) auto-load skills, but you can manually paste skill content into any chat agent (ChatGPT, Cursor, Aider, Continue) and ask it to follow the instructions. The behavior won't be quite as smooth as native skill loading, but the rubric still works.