36 Comments
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Raji RV's avatar

Yaro - Love the breakdown. It is very clearly articulated.

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Thank you so much @Raji RV🤗

Suhrab Khan's avatar

As someone building AI products full-time, I can confirm: mastering the AI coding lexicon isn’t just jargon, it directly shapes quality, speed, and maintainability. Karo’s breakdown is a must-read for anyone shipping real AI-powered software.

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Thank you so much for reading Suhrab 🤗

M Usman's avatar

The terminology matters, but in practice most teams I’ve seen end up with a hybrid approach.

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Exactly:) Thank you for reading M Usman 🤗

Saurabh Dalvi's avatar

Woah a good piece!!

Daria Cupareanu's avatar

This is one of those posts worth bookmarking for anyone trying to figure out how to approach AI-assisted building 👏 I like how you cut through the buzzwords and mapped out what each method looks like in practice

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Thank you so much Daria! 🤗

Karen Spinner's avatar

Thank you for clearly defining all these squishy buzzwords! I think I'm mixing and matching from them all, but at least now I can describe what I'm doing. 😄

Anastasia | ModernMomPlaybook's avatar

This is gold! Love how you cut through the hype and actually map the trade-offs between vibecoding, spec-driven, and agentic approaches.

Vishal Kataria's avatar

Love it. The biggest takeaway for me on why we should aim for full transparency on the method used is so AI PMs can set the right expectation.

Data Frank's avatar

This was such a sharp breakdown, Karo. Relating hard to the part about fuzzy boundaries—I’ve felt the same in content creation where words get tossed around and start losing meaning.

From my lens, I think about it like this: systems give clarity. Just like in coding, the right language (and structure) cuts through chaos so your process doesn’t collapse under its own weight.

That’s what I’m always exploring in my own notes—how simple, repeatable systems keep us steady when buzzwords start to blur.

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Thank you so much for reading 🤗

Sharyph's avatar

this guide is super useful...getting the terminology right is so important for team collaboration and setting clear expectations. Love the focus on transparency and a hybrid approach.

Farida Khalaf's avatar

Love the clarity in the breakdown

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Thank you so much @Farida Khalaf 🤗

Mirror Malfunction's avatar

Turns out I’ve been vibecoding my shopping list in my sleep.

Now I’ve got a shload of Pop-Tarts, soy sauce, and sardines…

…and one single inflatable kayak in the pantry.

Chris Tottman's avatar

Unbelievably good as always Karo ! I published about Vibe Coding last month - feel free to check it out - https://open.substack.com/pub/thefoundercorner/p/vibe-coding-101-the-no-code-stack

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Awesome, I will! Thank you @Chris Tottman 🤗

Katrina Watson's avatar

Love this!! Such a great breakdown. I just realised I also have been incorrectly using the term vibe coding, which after reading this I realise is very rarely what I actually do. Hybrid for the win! Sometimes it's fun to start with a vibe to test out a rough idea, and that usually gets me a lot more clarity on what I do and don't want and I do the other 99% using a combo of the different methods.

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Thank you so much for reading Katrina 🤗

Joel Salinas's avatar

Excellent post!

Ash Stuart ✅'s avatar

I'd say Prompt Engineering is just a fancy way of saying "how to ask", or as I've written in my piece - Ask and Ye Shall Recieve. Many people using Generative AI go to one extreme or the other - usually the one where they think the chatbot will read your mind and know exactly what you want. Just as it doesn't work with an intern or other colleague you delegate to, it won't work with AI either.

Overall this article is a great piece of contextualization, Karo. Everyone is now on the 'vibecoding' bandwagon, it's like if you're not doing it you're ngmi. So this overall clarification of the different industry approaches is really welcome and long overdue.

All that said, I then read toward the end about your clever use of the buzzword 'vibecoding' and explain why - now that's commendable integrity. :-)

Karo (Product with Attitude)'s avatar

Thank you so much Ash! 🤗