Your project files are the AI’s memory. If they are disorganized, the AI generates inconsistent code. I spent 3 months refining my project structure for AI readability. Here is the template. What files should every AI-friendly project have? CONTEXT.md: project overview, stack, architecture decisions. CLAUDE.md or .cursorrules: AI behavior rules and constraints. SPEC.md: active feature…

The best vibe coding prompts are not detailed instructions. They are context-rich descriptions. I tested this theory by comparing verbose prompts against context-rich prompts. The context-rich ones produced better code 80% of the time. What makes a prompt ‘context-rich’ versus ‘instruction-heavy’? Instruction-heavy: ‘Write a function that fetches user data from an API and displays it…

My first prompt never produces working code. The loop that fixes it: change one variable, regenerate, compare, keep the winner, then repeat.

The AI cannot see the screen, so mobile breaks where web does not. React Native plus Expo, tested on a real device, is the only loop that held up for me.

Three AI sessions left me 47 new files and a two-hour merge conflict. Now every session gets its own branch, cut before the first prompt instead of after.

Fake API methods, invented config keys, library functions that were renamed. Three patterns cover almost every hallucination I have had to fix.

One branch per AI session, one commit per prompt that touches more than a couple of files. That habit cut my merge conflicts to almost nothing.

A prompt asks the AI to guess what to build. A spec tells it. Switching to specs is the single biggest quality jump my AI output has ever had.

Paste an existing route above the new one and the style carries over. That is why the payment webhooks needed almost no cleanup.

I ignored Plan mode for two weeks. The first time I let it map the project before writing, the diff came back smaller and closer to right.

Six months of doing it wrong, everything by Tab, then everything by Agent. Now under five lines is Tab, anything across files is Agent.

Mine took eight months of tweaking. Three sections did most of the work: the stack, the architecture rules, and what I never want generated.