That Vibe Coder
Last week I came across a Reddit post trashing Beehiiv, the platform I run my newsletter on. The guy couldn't figure anything out and said the whole site sucks.
So I asked him: have you ever actually run a newsletter before? He said no. I asked if he knew what any of the terminology means. Also no.
The tool was never the problem. He didn't know what he was trying to do. And that's the exact spot most business owners are in with AI right now.
AI Can't Aim For You
AI is the best execution tool that's ever existed, and it has zero opinion on whether the thing you're executing on is worth doing. With a little bit of guidance, you can point it at the right task and start saving hours back into your week.
I see the wrong version constantly:
- Money poured into ads an AI wrote - with no idea who the ad is for or what happens after the click
- Automating processes that shouldn't exist at all - now the report nobody reads writes itself
- Chasing whatever tool went viral this week - instead of the thing that actually moves the needle in their day
The Two Questions
Before anything gets automated in my business, it has to pass one of two questions: does this make me money, or does this save me real time?
It's not really whether AI can do it, as it can do almost anything you ask it to nowadays. That's exactly why your direction matters more than ever. If you can't prompt the end result properly, it doesn't get built.
That goes for everything I've shown you lately too. The skills, the agent teams, the knowledge base, all of it is horsepower. Point that at the wrong process and you've automated something useless. That's worse than doing nothing, and it's exactly what happens when you grab random templates and start automating before you know what actually moves your business.
You Can't Ask For What You Can't Name
Say you want AI to build your website. If you don't know the big section at the top is called a hero, or that "above the fold" means everything people see before they scroll, you can't describe what you want. So you type "make it look good," get something generic, and blame the tool.
And it goes for everything:
- Building an app - terms like rate limiting and row-level security are waiting for you, and those are the basics
- Running a newsletter - opens, segments, deliverability, like our Reddit friend never learned
- Every kind of work has its own words - knowing them is how you point AI at the right thing
Nobody's born knowing this stuff, so here's the move: ask your AI to teach you the words before you ask it to do the work. You would be surprised how much you can learn by just following Claude's instructions.
One Thing to Try This Week
Don't scatter this across your whole business. You'll get further automating one important process than half automating five. So this week:
- Open Claude and ramble - I use Wispr Flow so I can talk instead of type, but typing works fine. Tell it how your business runs, where your week goes and what's been eating your time
- Ask it one question - based on everything I just told you, what's the one process I should automate first?
- Don't run off and build yet - stay in the conversation, ask why it picked that one, and ask what the moving parts are called
That back and forth is you learning the words, and by the end of it you'll know exactly what to point AI at.
Where to Point It Next
Figuring out where to point all this is literally the first week inside The Vibe Stack. We map your business, find the tasks actually worth automating, then spend 30 days building the agent team that takes them off your plate. Founding members are getting in at the floor while I build it out.