The Vibe Coding Checklist

88 items · 8 stages

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