How to Write a Build Spec for Your AI App (Beginner Guide): A beginner guide from the founder of GoodVibeSpecs

How do you start building an AI app when you have never built one before? Most people open ChatGPT, Cursor, Bolt, or Lovable and start typing. And most people end up frustrated. Not because the AI tools are bad. Because the starting point was vague. The real problem with vibe coding as a beginner Vibe coding — describing what you want in plain English and letting AI generate the app — has completely changed what is possible for non-technical people. A quarter of YC Winter 2025 startups had codebases that were 95% AI-generated. Andrej Karpathy, who coined the term in 2025, called it a fundamental shift in how software gets built. Collins Dictionary made it their Word of the Year. But here is what nobody tells you when you are just starting out. The AI is not the problem. Your starting point is. When you open a new chat and type something like “build me an app that helps people find dog sitters,” the AI has to guess what you actually mean. It guesses your users. It guesses your features.