The causality is backwards

Most vibecoding projects are doomed from day one. Not because the code is bad. Because from the start, the causality is backwards.

The drive often looks like this: the tokens for this week are still sitting there. If you don’t write something, it feels like you’re wasting the subscription. If you don’t make something, you feel idle. So you go down one rabbit hole after another. Debug, refactor, add a feature, debug again. The product becomes a byproduct of burning tokens.

But a product was never “what I built”. It is “whose pain got solved”. That has nothing to do with how good the code is, or how elegant the architecture looks.

This is not a new problem. Traditional businesses have been falling into the same hole for decades. Ignore the user. Ignore the market. Don’t know what people actually need. Make something you happen to love. Then nobody cares. Not because you weren’t working hard. Because the problem you solved does not exist.

The products and businesses that actually work usually come down to a few cases. You solved a real problem other people had not noticed. You took a process and made it better than anyone else can. Or you did an existing thing better than everyone else.

There is also something that does not feel intuitive: a lot of successful products were not hits on day one. They sat half-dead for a long time. Questioned, tested, torn down, rebuilt, until something real was left. The patience to stay alive matters more than the first spark.

Before you start, sit with one question. Are you solving a problem that exists, or are you just giving yourself something to do?

A lot of people have already handed their thinking to an agent.