Vibe with Code: Plan First, Build Second

The most expensive mistake engineers make with AI isn't the code. It's skipping the plan. Software engineering has never been about writing code first. It's about understanding the problem, exploring approaches, analyzing tradeoffs, then building. But when AI enters the workflow, all of that disappears. We collapse the process into one prompt, the AI fills in every blank on its own, and we call it productivity. Rate limiting? The AI picks something. Auth strategy? It picks something. Pagination? It picks something. Not necessarily what your system actually needs. But the code compiled, so it must be right, right? Vibe coding works with structure That structure is plan mode. Engineers keep dming me asking how I build apps with AI that don't fall apart. I plan and use agentic teams that review each other's work. It's not one AI doing everything solo. It's a whole pipeline. This is how I get quality output without babysitting every line. This weekend, I decided I would take the time to wa