2026 Edition

The Vibe Coding Checklist

Ship fast, ship right. A battle-tested checklist for AI-assisted development covering project setup, code quality, security hardening, testing, and deployment. Built from 4000+ prompts worth of lessons and the collective wisdom of r/vibecoding.

88 items • 8 stages
Stage 1 / 11 items

Project Foundation

Before you write a single prompt. Get your foundation right so the AI has context and you have guardrails.

Define your product vision with clear goals, user flows, and success metrics
Create wireframes or UI mockups before building
Choose a popular, well-documented tech stack
Initialize git repository with proper .gitignore
Create development and main branches
Create /docs folder with project documentation for AI context
Set up Cursor rules or .cursorrules file with your tech stack and patterns
Create a common-mistakes.md file to track repeated AI errors
Plan your data structure before coding
Choose and configure your database
Use an ORM for database operations
Next