After vibe coding: how do you take your product to the next phase?

Hi Andrea, I thought id like to contribute my thoughts on this here, however long winded....

I'm a self taught software engineer/developer with many years of test engineering experience. I do not use any of these tools you have mentioned.

I don't consider myself a vibe coder but if i was to completely rely on prompts alone to get me from concept, creation, production and commercial grade applications without at least the minimum coding fundamentals in my area of choice related to my project would make me very nervous.

My advice to any vibe coder is to take some coding courses of your choice, even if its just introduction, fundamentals to understand what it is your really creating, how it works, debugging, testing, error recovery etc. There's a lot of online training available out there.

When i start a project from some idea or identify a need for something useful to the public or a business, i start with a list of requirements to accomplish it. Is my project web based, desktop, embedded, cloud, Android, SaaS? Does it work only on certain OS platforms? Outline all the functions i need it to perform initially and then build around that foundation like the user interface, features. During this whole process I'm adding logging in my code to help identify any bottlenecks or bugs later during testing should they arise. I test my code or apps in the environment they will be used so only then do i know its is production ready, especially if they will be integrated with hardware or internal/external database or run across internet, Lan/wan network. I also share my app with others to test and review which provides valuable feedback to improve later. I also test my prototypes in a real world environment not in some sand box virtual environment or IDE so i can then move to production stages.

Testing and security is paramount to account for any and all possibilities that could create application errors, crashes, etc. making for a bad user experience which results in negative everything right from the start.

With all said. I do use AI prompts to assist me in various stages of development including code completion, bugs or overcoming other complexities.

I learn from this as well and makes me better at what i want/need to accomplish now and on future projects.

I use VS code, AI, python, java, flask, html, css, Android studio, Cloudflare, Ollama, Git, Cmake and various others.

I'm no expert any one area but I've taken short to medium length training courses in all of these areas over the last 4 years and more importantly i have used that knowledge which builds confidence.

In conclusion, i have mixed feelings regarding vibe coding because you really are stuck at a certain point without understanding all the elements or full scope of your project and how it will be used, applied in production or commercial environments including marketing later (Who wants it or will use it and for what?).

To get over that hurdle i strongly recommend some addition training rather than rely solely on vibe coding tools.

Not sure if any of this helps but i just wanted to provide a little information about my own personal experience.

I'm not a dev, but I can tell you how I approached this as I migrated from Bolt to something more scalable for me.

I built out what I considered to be a pretty robust prototype within Bolt including a Stripe integration for payment gateway, Supabase backend with Github and Netlify for code and deployments. I was also using Resend for email automations.

I started getting "project too big" flags from Bolt and despite trying all of its recommendations, I was basically stuck, so I had to find a better way and began researching next step solutions. I took this research to ChatGPT and had a game planning session to devise a pretty helpful step-by-step.

I don't need to get into the process, but effectively I pulled the plug on deploying from Bolt to deploying from Github/Netlify on my own and downloaded Cursor to begin cleaning up after myself and creating a new workflow.

Once I got comfortable using node and Cursor it was like I grabbed a new gear and my ability to iterate and squash bugs was amplified.

I only started using Bolt back in December so making this move was necessary to continue progressing in my learning process into this brave new world.

Honestly, the biggest mistake I made was trying to rebuild everything from scratch once I hit the limits of no-code. I ended up wasting about 3 months rewriting stuff that already worked fine. Looking back, a much better approach would have been just figuring out exactly which parts actually needed real code and leaving the rest as is.

And what really helped was bringing in one senior developer....not full time, just as an advisor. They looked at my prototype, pointed out what would scale and what wouldn’t, and helped me map out a clear plan.....and that one decision saved me a lot of time and unnecessary rebuilds.

Also, the hardest part was knowing when to make that jump. I stayed in prototype mode way too long because users seemed happy. But once bigger customers started asking technical questions I couldn’t answer, I realized I couldn’t avoid it any longer.

That wall you mentioned is real vibe coding and no-code tools are perfect for validation, but they rarely survive the transition to production.

From what I’ve seen, the smartest path is usually:

Identify which workflows need to be rebuilt for scale (auth, DB reliability, integrations).

Bring in technical depth gradually either through fractional engineers or by leaning on frameworks/templates that won’t need rework later.

For non-technical founders, the key is not trying to “engineer everything” yourself, but making the product future-proof enough that when you do hand it over, it’s an evolution, not a rebuild.

Curious how you’re thinking about it do you want to eventually build out a technical team, or keep leveraging AI/no-code as long as it carries you?