WebCongress USA · NYC · June 2026
Vibe Coding in 9½ Stages
How a non-technical marketer actually approaches a new vibe-coded project — from antenna up to live URL. Adapted from the WebCongress USA 2026 keynote.
Key takeaways
- Vibe coding is a marketing skill dressed up as an engineering skill.
- The half-stage matters: the pre-stage antenna is where every good project starts.
- Ship the ugly version first. Design tokens on day one, polish on day thirty.
The setup
I'm a non-technical marketer. In roughly 18 months I've shipped 48+ live software products using Lovable and a handful of adjacent tools. This is not a story about learning to code. It's a story about learning to *direct* a system that codes.
The 9½ stages, in order
Stage ½ — Antenna. Notice the itch. Someone complains, a category is ugly, a joke wants to become a product. Write it down inside sixty seconds.
Stage 1 — Name the reader. Not "target audience". One human. What would make them screenshot this and send it to a friend?
Stage 2 — Pick the smallest useful shape. Landing page? Directory? Utility? Feed? Choose the shape that ships this week.
Stage 3 — Design tokens on day one. Colors, type, spacing. Not "brand". Constraints so nothing looks like the default Lovable/Tailwind starter.
Stage 4 — First-prompt discipline. The first prompt is the whole spec. Write it like a brief, not a wish list.
Stage 5 — Data before delight. Model the tables before you touch a hero section. If you can't describe the data in one paragraph, you don't have a product yet.
Stage 6 — Publish ugly. The domain buys you feedback. Ship at 60% and let the URL do the marketing.
Stage 7 — GEO/AEO tuning. If ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini can't cite you, your site barely exists in 2026.
Stage 8 — Compound. Cross-link to your other properties. One site is a page. Ten sites is a network. Forty-eight sites is leverage.
Stage 9 — Kill or keep. Every quarter, one property gets retired. The ones that survive get invested in.
Why the ½
Because the first, unnumbered stage isn't a step you take — it's the sensitivity you cultivate. Everything downstream compounds off of that one line you jotted down before the idea got sensible.
The 6 phases of vibe coding
Each phase, one page.
phase
Phase 1 — Landing Pages
Where every Dream Viber starts. A single URL that proves you can ship, capture intent, and edit at the speed of thought.
phase
Phase 2 — Corporate & Informational Sites
Multi-page sites for real businesses. Structure without stiffness, brand without bloat, and content that survives an SEO crawl.
phase
Phase 3 — Interactive Content Sites
When a page needs to react. Calculators, quizzes, generators, teardowns — content that changes based on what the visitor does.
phase
Phase 4 — Indie Power Tools
Tools you use every day for one specific job. Not products yet — instruments. The ones you ship to yourself first.
phase
Phase 5 — Subscription Products
The jump from tool to product. Auth, billing, recurring value, and the discipline of building something worth paying for every month.
phase
Phase 6 — Nerve Centers
The command bridge. Where you run every other property from one place — dashboards, admin panels, cron jobs, and the AI ops that hold the network together.
Original talk deck lives at highcaliberai.com/webcongress.