Build Apps That Work Beyond the Demo.
A free, end-to-end guide to vibe coding production-grade software with AI, from a plain idea to live, monitored, scaling software, built with agents like Cursor and Claude Code. No signup, no paywall to start reading.
This is the community and companion repository for the book, not the book text itself. It exists for two things:
- Discussions and Q&A on the book and on every chapter. Ask questions, share what you built, and correct or extend a chapter, right where you read it.
- Companion materials you can install and use: an AI OS, agents, boilerplates, Claude Code skills, and worked examples. See Coming soon.
People who build software mostly by directing an AI agent (Cursor, Claude Code, and friends) and want to ship apps that are actually reliable, secure, and maintainable, not just demos that fall over in production. No CS degree assumed. If you can describe what you want and read what the agent gives back, this is for you.
AI can write the code. It cannot yet decide what to build, how to structure it, when it is wrong, or what "production-grade" means. This book teaches the professional lifecycle around the code, from a plain idea to live, monitored, scaling software, at a level a non-pro can follow. Full reasoning lives in the book itself.
The complete arc, from a plain idea to live, scaling software:
- Introduction - What this book is, how to read it, and who wrote it, the on-ramp before chapter one.
- Plan: Structure your idea into a clear specification - Turn a vague idea into a clear, buildable spec before your AI agent writes a single line.
- Dev Set Up: Prepare your environment and tools - Set up your machine, your stack, and your AI agent so you're building, not fighting tools.
- AI Set Up: Setup your AI agents operating system - Give your agents a real operating system: memory, tools, scheduling, and guardrails, not one-off chats.
- Architect: Lay out a modular codebase for your AI - Lay out a modular codebase your AI agent can actually navigate, extend, and not wreck.
- Build: Implement the application in working slices - Direct your agent through small, reviewable slices instead of one giant, unreviewable generation.
- Debug: Diagnose and fix what the agent breaks - Read stack traces, break agent loops, bisect regressions, and roll back safely when it breaks.
- Harden: Make it secure, tested, and reliable - Make it secure, tested, and production-grade before real users ever touch it.
- Ship: Deploy to production on real infrastructure - Deploy to real infrastructure with environments, CI/CD, and releases you can roll back.
- Operate: Run and maintain it in production - Keep it alive: logging, observability, alerting, backups, and incident response.
- Scale: Grow it to handle real traffic and data - Grow it to handle real traffic and data without blowing the budget or the database.
Companion materials you'll be able to install and use, landing here as their chapters go live:
- AI OS: a ready-to-run operating system for your agents, the control center, departments, scheduling, and reports the book builds.
- Agents: preconfigured Claude Code agents you drop in and run.
- Boilerplates and starters: production-shaped project scaffolds with the modular structure and agent house-rules already wired.
- Claude Code skills: reusable agent workflows the book teaches, drop into
.claude/skills/and go. - Examples: worked, runnable code and artifacts from the chapters.
Nothing shipped yet, this is where it will land. Watch or star the repo to catch it.
Every chapter page has its own comment thread. Comment right from the page, or open a discussion here. Be kind, stay on topic, and search before posting.
Spotted an error, an outdated command, or a gap? Open a discussion or a pull request. Content fixes flow back into the book; skills, starters, and examples live and evolve here.
Use the materials here to build anything you want, including commercial products. Just don't resell or redistribute the materials themselves as a standalone product. The book's text is not in this repo and is all rights reserved. See LICENSE.
Written by Mahmoud Zalt · zalt.me