Behind the Scenes: Why PMs Are Vibecoding Real Products
5 Non-Obvious Reasons Product Managers Should Start Vibecoding Today.
Hi, I’m Karo 🤗.
Each week, I share awesome insights from the world of AI product management and building in public. If you’re new here - welcome! Here’s a peek at what you might have missed:
- I Broke Replit So You Don’t Have To
- Is Your Replit Looping? This Will Help
A huge thank you to everyone who read, commented on, and shared my last post!
At first, I didn’t even tell anyone I ‘‘vibecoded’’.
The name itself feels like a joke, easy to dismiss. I also prefer to unpack things on my own without being swayed by others’ opinions.
Now I can say this with confidence: vibecoding isn’t a joke. It lets you ship real, product-grade apps.
Not your company’s ERP system, sure.
But if you’re an enterprise PM, it’s the one skill you don’t want to ignore.
Let me show you why.
What Is Vibecoding?
Vibecoding is using natural language prompts to describe what you want to build, then overseeing AI handle the execution.
For PMs, it’s a new way to interact with products. It gives you visibility into code, databases, and logs you’d normally never see.
And before you ask: no, you don’t need to know how to code. It helps, but it’s not required.
What matters more is your ability to be specific about what you need the system to do. And if you’re a PM, that’s a skill you’ve probably mastered a long time ago.
Why Vibecoding Belongs in My Toolkit Now
Most people think of vibecoding as a quick prototyping trick.
And sure, it is.
But for a PM, the real value hides in the less obvious benefits: the ones that change how you work day to day.
1. Empowerment
Humans like to make things. If you’re a PM, you like to make things a lot.
And if you’re a PM like me, you don’t just like making things - you like learning, tinkering and experimenting.
Vibecoding gave me three gifts:
It bulldozed the walls between my ideas and actually doing something about them
It gave my PM skills (strategizing, defining, framing) a bigger playground than a Miro board
It keeps pointing out what I need to learn next
Put it all together, and vibecoding leaves you feeling not just empowered, but refreshed. Like your creative energy finally has room to stretch.
2. Automating Internal Ops
Many PMs get stuck doing product operations, reporting, and endless workflow tweaks (ask me how I know).
Vibecoding flips that script.
Instead of waiting in line for engineering time, you can spin up scrappy internal tools that actually move work forward:
Dashboards on demand
Workflow automations
Reporting bots
Experiment launchers
Admin cleanup scripts
These aren’t the glamorous projects that get roadmap headlines, but they’re the ones that actually move the needle, keep the team humming, and uncover insights faster than formal development cycles.
3. Turbocharging the Build-Measure-Learn Cycle
Feedback loops are everything for a PM.
With vibecoding, those loops stop dragging and start snapping into place. You can spin up a functional prototype, put real user flows in front of actual people, and validate a concept, sometimes all in the same day.
I tried this while building StackShelf, and it was the fastest feedback loop of my entire career. Even faster than the ones I’d seen in dedicated innovation labs. Ideas that used to take weeks to validate were tested in a matter of hours.
A proud PM moment, if you ask me.
Just to warn you: after tasting that speed, going back to old validation methods feels impossible.
4. Making You a Better Partner to Engineers
My whole life, I prided myself on having a good understanding of what engineers need from me: how to be helpful, when to step in, and when to stay out of the way so their workflow isn’t disrupted.
Vibecoding takes that understanding a step further.
One of the clearest lessons was about sequencing. Vibecoding makes it obvious why engineers prioritize and split work the way they do. You start to experience why foundations have to come first: the database before the dashboard, the authentication before the profile page.
5. It’s Turning Into A Movement
Traditional product communities are informative, polite, and oddly uncollaborative. Rarely do you see PMs actually breaking problems apart together.
Vibecoding changes that.
It’s a movement of builders. PMs, designers, data folks, ex-consultants, founders building side by side, swapping tips and…having fun.
Which, if you think about it, is exactly how you imagined PM work would look when you first started.
In the Product With Attitude community alone, several PMs are already vibecoding in public: Elena Calvillo, Priya Mathew Badger, Dayem, Ashwin Francis, Raghav Mehra Ivan Kalungi Clausen, Yaron Cohen, Jon Harris, Zain Haseeb, Ileana.
And that list only covers full-time product managers. If we include PM-adjacent roles the number is much higher.
TL;DR
The 5 Non-Obvious Benefits of Vibecoding Every PM Should Know:
Empowers creativity by smashing barriers between ideas and execution.
Automates boring internal ops (dashboards, reporting, workflows).
Turbocharges the build–measure–learn cycle with rapid prototypes.
Makes you a sharper partner to engineers.
It’s turning into a community-driven movement of PMs vibecoding in public.
Additional Resources
Learning Paths
👉 Unsure how to start vibecoding? → Reach out, I’m just a message away!
👉 Looking to improve your prompts? → Start with this post
👉 Curious WHY I vibecoded StackShelf? → Start with this post and follow the links.
Community Updates
We’re still growing! We just crossed 2.3K members, thank you all for being here!
Stackshelf just crossed 113 products.
Jenny Ouyang launched vibecoding.builders - a showcase site for our vibecoded creations!
Kenny - Your Freelance Friend ’s vibecoded app is launching on Product Hunt soon, so keep an eye out!
Thanks to Michael Spencer, we now have our own spot at 💎 AI Vanguard Society. If you’re into AI, you’ll feel right at home there.
Recommended Reads
Paweł Huryn: Lovable Just Killed Two Apps? Create Your Own SaaS Without Coding in 2 Days - Pawel vibecoded his newest product from A-Z.
Jakub Slys 🎖️: Substack automation with n8n: how to publish Notes automatically - not vibecoding, but a generous share so I’m passing it along.
I do agree the movement is super fun! I've been meeting people (like yourself) all over the Internet just from plugging into the community getting excited about this new way of building.
The "can't go back" feeling is real!
Love the illustration in this one ❤️