Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46257562

by brihati • 7 months ago

1 6 7 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

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?

rahmanyoo2• 7 months ago

I 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

brihati2• 7 months ago

I agree. have you tried any framework such as spec-kit by Microsoft to generate feature specs?

rahmanyoo2• 7 months ago

i have not. Just a personal preference to write specs myself because i want as much control at early planning stages.

delaminator2• 7 months ago

I 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.

brihati2• 7 months ago

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?

delaminator2• 7 months ago

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.

Ask HN: Do you write a technical doc first or just vibe code?

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