When starting a greenfield project, do you take the time to write things down sketching out the domain, architectural direction, and key trade-offs to clarify your thinking upfront, or do you prefer to let the design emerge incrementally as you vibe code?
Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?
#2I tried both ways. Letting design emerge incrementally adds vibe-coded technical debt.
At minimum prepare project specs with features as .md file. I found claude to be useful for this task.
If you’re using Cursor, pick a template from here. https://cursor.directory/rules
Re: Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?
#3I chat with Claude about viability, capability, existing solutions, alternative approaches, etc.
This helps me get an idea of what we’re doing. I get pushback and have to be clear and Opus is good at asking questions.
Then I get it to write a set of documents for Claude Code describing the vision, the solution, the technical choices, the testing plan, the validation approach, how to share with colleagues, future ideas and a table of contents.
Re: Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?
#4I chat with Claude about viability, capability, existing solutions, alternative approaches, etc. This helps me get an idea of what we’re doing. I get pushback and have to be clear and Opus is good at asking questions. Then I get it to write a set of documents for Claude Code describing the vision, the solution, the technical choices, the testing plan, the validation approach, how to share with colleagues, future idea…
Great approach, since you are following a pre-defined set of approaches, have you thought of building an agent for it? or do you have a prompt which helps you with getting the relevant answer?
Re: Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?
#5I tried both ways. Letting design emerge incrementally adds vibe-coded technical debt. At minimum prepare project specs with features as .md file. I found claude to be useful for this task. If you’re using Cursor, pick a template from here. https://cursor.directory/rules
I agree. have you tried any framework such as spec-kit by Microsoft to generate feature specs?
Re: Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?
#6I chat with Claude about viability, capability, existing solutions, alternative approaches, etc. This helps me get an idea of what we’re doing. I get pushback and have to be clear and Opus is good at asking questions. Then I get it to write a set of documents for Claude Code describing the vision, the solution, the technical choices, the testing plan, the validation approach, how to share with colleagues, future idea…
Great approach, since you are following a pre-defined set of approaches, have you thought of building an agent for it? or do you have a prompt which helps you with getting the relevant answer?
I have a projects folder in the app which has a set of instructions - bot mostly what documents to follow. It works well enough but you're right, I should push it a bit more.
It's great that we can iterate on the solutions and they become general.
Re: Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?
#7I tried both ways. Letting design emerge incrementally adds vibe-coded technical debt. At minimum prepare project specs with features as .md file. I found claude to be useful for this task. If you’re using Cursor, pick a template from here. https://cursor.directory/rules
I agree. have you tried any framework such as spec-kit by Microsoft to generate feature specs?
i have not. Just a personal preference to write specs myself because i want as much control at early planning stages.