Ch 13◷ 68:12Give It Tools

Cursor & vibe coding

For real programming, leave the web app: a tool with your files, driven by commands.

mental model

For serious code, don't copy-paste snippets out of a chat window — it's too slow and the model lacks context. Use a dedicated app like Cursor that sits on your file system, calls a model's API under the hood, and edits across your project. Its Composer agent can run commands and change many files at once. You mostly give instructions and hope — "vibe coding."

Cursor isn't a website — it's a program with your files. Under the hood it calls Claude's API, but you never copy-paste; it has the context of your whole directory.

Cursor's Composer building a tic-tac-toe React app — **From five sentences to an app.** He asked Composer to scaffold a React repo and make tic-tac-toe; it wrote the CSS, JS, and structure. He “didn't really do anything except write five sentences.”

“The name for this is called Vibe Coding — a name that I think I probably minted. Vibe Coding just refers to… giving control to Composer and just telling it what to do and hoping that it works.”
Andrej Karpathy·72:27

He asks for confetti and a victory sound when someone wins. Composer installs a library, edits multiple files, even fetches a sound file — pausing to ask permission for risky commands. It mostly just works.

The tic-tac-toe app with a confetti win effect added by the agent — **The agent at work.** Composer edits across files, runs commands (with confirmations), and deploys on save — you supervise more than you type.

tipThe escape hatch

Vibe coding isn't a trap because you still have the files. If the agent gets stuck, "we can always fall back to standard programming." The AI does the low-level work; you keep the ability to take the wheel.

The load-bearing points

For real coding, use a file-aware app (Cursor), not chat copy-paste.
It calls a model's API under the hood with your project's full context.
Composer is an agent: multi-file edits, runs commands, asks before risky ones.
“Vibe coding” = instruct and hope — with a fallback to real programming.

↗ Try it yourself

Vibe a tiny app

In Cursor (or a similar agent editor), start an empty project and ask it to build one small thing in a few sentences. Watch it scaffold and edit.

Show the point

Keep instructions high-level at first — you're testing how far “telling it what to do and hoping” gets you.

Take the wheel

After the agent finishes, open one file and make a manual change. Prove to yourself the fallback exists.

Show the point

This is the safety valve that makes vibe coding sane: the files are yours, editable by hand any time.

? Check yourself

1Why use Cursor instead of pasting code in and out of a chat?

2Define “vibe coding” and its safety net.

Handing control to the agent (Composer) — describing what you want and hoping it works. The safety net: you still own the files and can always drop back to editing code by hand.