Realistic expectations

Set these now so you're not disappointed later:

• You will read a lot of code. Reviewing is the job. If you don't want to read code, this isn't a shortcut around that.
• It won't one-shot anything non-trivial. Expect a few rounds of the loop. That's normal, not failure.
• You're still responsible. When AI-written code breaks in production, "the model wrote it" is not a defense. You shipped it.
• It gets faster, not free. The tools are remarkable. They are not magic. The judgment stays yours.

And to be blunt about what this book is not: it's not a path to shipping software you don't understand, and it's not a get-rich-quick scheme. Anyone selling vibe coding as "build an app without learning to code" is selling the toy version — the one that falls apart on contact with real users. The skill compounds for people who treat it as leverage on top of engineering judgment, not as a replacement for it.

The promise of vibe coding is real: you can build more, faster, in more domains than you could alone. But it rewards the engineer who stays engaged — who directs, reviews, and refines — and punishes the one who checks out and accepts whatever appears.

Be the tech lead, not the spectator. The rest of this book is how.