Vibecoding is the new product management

"The hottest new programming language is English."

— Andrej Karpathy.

Right now - today - you can describe something in plain english and watch claude build an app for you. You can quite literally one shot the app - with a database, a frontend, API connections, the whole thing.

I’ve done it many times myself. And I think everybody should.

But before we get into that..

What Happened This Week:

Two stories.

1: Anthropic: had a $200M contract with the pentagon. The Pentagon said remove your safety restrictions. Let us use claude for anything.

Anthropic had two red lines. Mass domestic surveillance of Americans. Fully autonomous weapons. That's it. Two things.

So they said no. (basically)

As a response - Trump ordered every federal agency to stop using Anthropic.

Hours later. OpenAI struck a deal with the pentagon. (Sam Altman agrees it was a rushed deal)

But as a result: claude hit number one on the App Store.

People are cancelling GPT subscriptions.

Free users up 60% since January. Paid subscribers doubled.

Claude rejected $200 million & pretty much earned the trust of billions of people worldwide.

Seems like your willingness to say NO to money can be a defining moment for your brand.

2: Jack Dorsey’s Block: Fired 4,000 people over a tweet. Nearly half the company. Said it directly - AI has changed what it means to build and run a company.

Stock went up 24% btw.

2 Kinds of people:

1. Above the API

2. Below the API

Below the API means your work can be described as a prompt.

Your tasks, your output, your daily contribution — someone could type it into Claude and get roughly the same result. If that's you, you're pretty much exposed.

Above the API means you're the one with the taste & judgment. The framework. The system. You're the human the AI reports to. You decide what gets built, what gets shipped, what gets killed. The AI executes. You simply orchestrate because you have the “right” judgement.

The 4,000 people who got laid off were below the API.

Anthropic is above the API at the company level.

They had a principle — two red lines — and they held it against $200 million in pressure. That's what a system looks like. Not a set of tasks. A set of principles.

And interestingly — vibe coding just made this split permanent.

What do I mean?

In the last few months Claude Code has taken over coding.

You describe what you want.

It lays out a plan. It interviews you. You give feedback & iterate using plain English.

It builds the scaffolding, downloads the libraries, connects the hooks, writes the tests.

You keep giving feedback. "This doesn't work. Change that. Move this here."

You WILL end up with a working application (without writing a single line of code.)

That means anyone can build now.

The barrier dropped to zero. But not everbody will.

The means of building are abundant. It's the desire to build that's scarce.

So What Do You Actually Do?

It’s not going to be simple.

But it's not complicated either.

It's just work that most people avoid because consumption feels easier & safer than creation.

So, how you do you start moving above the API level?

You Extract, & not just consume. 

Every piece of content you take in - every podcast, article, book, YouTube video, Space - should produce something.

Should change your behaviour in someway.

And not just yours. Your AI’s behavior as well.

Imagine if everything you learned or consumed improves your AI's behavior. Your AI immediately adopts it; you immediately adopt it.

That would be pretty cool.

I use a method called 1-1-1.

For every concept: one highlight (what was said), one insight (what it means to me), one action (what I'm going to do with it).

Three lines.

Reading without extraction is entertainment.

Reading with extraction is investment.

Build something. Today.

English is a programming language now.

You don't need to learn to code. You need to learn to describe what you want clearly. Open Claude/GPT.

Describe the tool you wish existed for your specific work.

And let it build.

Then iterate. Until it’s good.

Get above the API by having a framework. 

This is the part nobody talks about. Tools are available to everyone. AI is available to everyone. If every one uses AI to write posts, AI posts cancel each other out.

The remaining advantage is entirely human.

Your judgment. Your taste.

Your specific knowledge extracted from years of experience.

—

The world split this week. A company with conviction said no to $200 million and got rewarded. 4,000 people without a system lost their jobs and the stock went up.

The means of building are more abundant than they've ever been.

The means of learning are more abundant than they've ever been.

It's the desire that's scarce.

If you're reading this, you have the desire. Now build.

Day 196. Building and shipping.

— Vaibhav (VB)