Vibecoding 101

A 4-week scaffolded, hands-on introduction to vibecoding for beginners. Vibecoding, or AI-assisted software development, is the practice of guiding coding agents to translate your ideas into working software - without writing code yourself. We see vibecoding as 4 different product skills in a trench coat. While they may not write code, effective vibecoders mobilize concepts and workflows across software engineering, design, quality assurance, and product management. This course is a scaffolded, hands-on introduction to the fundamental skills and concepts required for a sustainable vibecoding practice. Students will learn through a combination of short lectures, applied exercises, personalized feedback, and demos to peers. We begin by working with coding agents in a multiplayer environment designed for beginners. We will create interactive frontends, learn the basics of the terminal, build integrations with APIs, and create stateful, full-stack applications with a database and user authentication. By the end of the course, students will transition to state-of-the-art coding agents installed on their personal machines, which they will use to build and deploy a working prototype to the web. Syllabus Session 1: Coding agents and frontends We introduce the course and core concepts of vibecoding. We introduce a basic taxonomy of web architecture. Students practice creating basic interactive frontends. Session 2: CLIs, APIs, and the terminal We cover core backend and data concepts.