I have zero coding experience, and the "85% problem" is real.

I just vibe-coded in Cursor (Sonnet 3.5/3.7) an entire 📚 book suggestion web app that almost made me quit several times before pushing past the 85% completion mark.

This is how I fixed it:

(ps: if you're an engineer you'll either laugh at me or think I'm dumb, I'm ok with both)

Some things about my site: it has a back and a front end, and connects to several APIs to build the recommendations: Perplexity, Claude, Google Books, OpenLibrary

(Note: I have never worked with API calls before this project)

I got to the first 80% quite fast, I was in a way both shocked and excited on how fast I was going to be able to deploy my site. Until the errors, oh man, the errors:

"Oh I see the issue now…"

"Oh I see the issue now…"

"Oh I see the issue now…"

The problem:

There's a point in which your code starts breaking or being rewritten by the very same agent that helped you build it, making it impossible to get to the finish (100%) line, it feels like building an endless Jenga tower that just doesn't get higher.

It got even worse when Sonnet 3.7 was released, for some reason its proactivity destroyed most of the things I had already built.

The solution:

1️⃣ Have Cursor build a roadmap for every feature

Before building any feature, as small as it may be, describe what you want it to do, and most importantly what it should not do, be as specific as possible and then have the agent build a roadmap.md to make sure you implement the feature accordingly

2️⃣ Build a robust and thorough PRD (Product Requirements Document)

When I started I thought that the PRD could live in my head, after all I'm the human building this right? I was wrong, it was not until I built a PRD.md that all of my requests referencing it helped the agent fix/build without breaking anything inside the code

3️⃣ Have Claude ask you relevant questions after submitting your prompt

Additions to your prompt like: "Do you need any clarifying questions from what I just requested?" And "If unsure before making any changes, ask me to be more specific" helped enormously

4️⃣ Stop the agent if it starts executing your idea incorrectly

I can't count the amount of times I shouted "NO! NO! NO!" When the agent started executing, but I was afraid to stop it, so instead I stopped it and rewrote the prompt to make sure the agent wouldn't take that route again, and again, and again until the prompt was perfect

These are some of the main learnings I thought were helpful to me (as a designer that has not touched code in +5 years) so hopefully these help others into their vibe-coder career

Here's the final product for those who want to play with it: http://moodshelf.io​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Edit: the recommendations are built by Claude finding similar books, so in essence it’s an AI wrapper. The “front table” section is powered by Perplexity with a very specific prompt for each category

*Edit 2: wow I wasn’t expecting that much hate lol