Guide
Vibe Coding vs Spec-Driven PM
Vibe coding gives you velocity. Spec-driven product management gives you direction. Here is when to use each - and how to combine them for AI-native product development.
The rise of vibe coding
In early 2025, Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” - the practice of prompting AI coding agents conversationally, iterating on output in real-time, and letting the agent handle implementation details. You describe what you want. The agent builds it. You refine by feel.
It works remarkably well for exploration. Engineers can prototype in minutes what used to take days. Internal tools, proof-of-concepts, and hackathon projects ship at unprecedented speed.
But vibe coding has a ceiling. When you move from “can we build this?” to “should we build this, and does it connect to our strategy?” - conversational prompts are not enough. You need structure. You need specifications.
The vibe coding trap
Building is now cheap. But building the wrong thing fast is still expensive. Teams that vibe-code production features report 40-60% rework rates because the agent built something that works technically but misses the strategic intent.
Side-by-side comparison
Different tools for different jobs. Neither is universally better.
When to use each approach
Vibe coding is great for...
- -Prototyping a concept to validate feasibility
- -Hackathons and time-boxed experiments
- -Internal tools only your team uses
- -Technical spikes exploring a new API or library
- -Personal projects and side projects
- -Early exploration before you know what to build
Spec-driven PM is for...
- Customer-facing features with quality expectations
- Cross-team work requiring shared understanding
- Features connected to OKRs and strategic goals
- Anything that needs to be maintained long-term
- Work that will be reviewed, measured, or audited
- When multiple agents or engineers touch the same area
The hybrid approach: explore, then specify
The best AI-native teams do not choose one approach exclusively. They use both in sequence:
1. Explore
Vibe-code prototypes to validate feasibility and discover constraints. Throw away the code - keep the learnings.
2. Specify
Write a structured spec that captures what you learned. Include vision context, guardrails, and success criteria.
3. Ship
Hand the spec to an AI coding agent for production implementation. The spec ensures strategic alignment at scale.
This is not a rigid waterfall. The explore phase might take 30 minutes. But the spec captures intent in a way that conversational prompts cannot - especially when multiple people, agents, or sprints are involved.
Why product management matters more - not less - when building is cheap
The common narrative is that AI coding agents will replace product managers. The reality is the opposite. When building is cheap, the constraint shifts from “can we build this?” to “should we build this?”
Vibe coding makes it trivial to build features. But without product context - vision, strategy, OKRs, discovery insights, competitive positioning - you ship features that nobody asked for, that conflict with your strategy, or that duplicate existing capabilities.
Spec-driven product management is how PMs stay relevant in the AI-native era. Not by writing code. Not by managing tickets. By maintaining the strategic context that makes AI agents build the right thing - not just the next thing. As Marty Cagan argues, foundation models become effective product coaches only when given your company’s strategic context — read the full analysis.
The learning loop
In vibe coding, learnings disappear when you close the chat window. In spec-driven PM, every cycle improves the specification system - learning captures feed back into vision, strategy, and future specs. Your product gets smarter over time.