Free Course Overview

Vibe Coding Foundations

Foundations progress 0 of 7 lessons complete (0%)

Before you start: what "done" looks like for this course

By the end of this free course, you will have:

  • A clear, working definition of vibe coding you could explain to a skeptical friend, including a real answer for the most common objection to it
  • Hands-on experience with at least one AI coding tool, and a working sense of when a different type of tool would serve you better
  • Several written, tested prompts you wrote yourself, across more than one kind of project
  • The ability to fix a result that has gone wrong, without knowing how to read the underlying code
  • A real webpage, built by you, that opens in a browser and that you can send to another person
  • A clear sense of which module is the right next step for what you want to build

Lesson list

FAQ

Is this course actually enough to build something real, or is it just a teaser?
It is genuinely enough to ship a real, working page you can open in a browser, and by the end you will have done exactly that, including recovering from a real problem along the way. What it does not cover is working inside larger, ongoing projects, saving your work safely with version control, or using more powerful editor-based tools. That is what later modules are for, and they are built to be the natural next step, not a way of making the basics feel incomplete on purpose.

What if my first project does not turn out how I wanted?
That is normal, and it is exactly what Lessons 1.4 and 1.5 are for. Most real results take a few rounds of plain-language feedback, and real problems are fixable using the expected/actual/when framework, without needing to understand the underlying cause yourself.

I do not have a specific idea for Lesson 1.1. What do I do?
Start smaller than feels reasonable. A page about a pet, a simple calculator for something in your daily life, a countdown to an event you care about. The size of the idea does not matter for this course. Completing the full loop does.

Why spend a whole lesson on things going wrong? Is that discouraging?
The opposite. Beginners who never see a real problem handled calmly tend to assume the first one they hit personally means they failed. Seeing it happen on purpose, and fixed with nothing but plain language, is what makes the eventual real one feel ordinary instead of alarming.

Glossary

Vibe coding
Building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI tool handle the technical execution.
Chat tool
A browser-based AI tool, like Claude or ChatGPT, you talk to directly, best for short-lived or one-off projects.
In-editor tool
An AI tool, like Cursor or Claude Code, that works inside a code editor on real project files, best for ongoing projects.
Prompt
The description you give an AI tool of what you want built.
The loop
Look, test, describe, repeat. The core feedback cycle used throughout this entire academy.
Expected / actual / when
The three-part framework for describing a real problem without needing to diagnose its cause yourself.
1.1 What is vibe coding? →