Beyond Vibe Coding
Patterns for Building Real Software with Claude Code
Contents
Pages marked • are unreviewed drafts. Right now, that is nearly all of them.
- Who This Book Is For (and Who It Isn't)•Draft v0. A living starting point — the three “is not” points the author named are in here, plus several that follow from the book’s …
- Building Blocks•Draft v0. A living catalog, not a locked list — expected to grow throughout writing. This is the vocabulary catalog for non-developer readers, …
- What Claude Assumes You Already Know•Part I chapter draft. A browsable directory of the invisible substrate — the operating-system and command-line plumbing Claude name-drops without …
- Speaking Claude's Language•This documents terms that Claude defaults to use and works with naturally. The idea is that if we use terms that Claude “instinctively” …
- The Engineer, Not the Programmer•Part II opener draft (working label). The thesis made concrete, and the canonical home of the book’s named distinction supervise, don’t …
- Principles That Outlast the Tool•Durable engineering judgment the reader should carry — framed as opportunities, not catches. These principles are true regardless of who or what …
- Correct by Design•Draft v0. A candidate spine for the book — captured from recent LinkedIn discussions. Living collection; anecdotes go at the bottom. The commodity …
- The Control Stack•A book-level mental model: the four mechanisms by which a developer shapes Claude’s behavior, arranged on a single axis from advisory to …
- Designing for an Agent Caller•Living spine for the deterministic-CLI chapter. Each principle is named alongside the Claude pathology it defends against — that’s the …
- Additive Bias and Calling the Question•Collected from “in the trenches” work with Claude Code. Each pattern: the name, what Claude does, the mechanism behind it, the classical …
- Testing When Claude Writes the Tests Too•Draft material for Ch 16 — “Testing When Claude Writes the Tests Too” (Part IV). Durable testing judgment the reader should carry, framed …
- Version Control•Part I chapter draft. The one big landmark the directory chapter flags but doesn’t cover. This is a narrative chapter, not a Briefing entry, …
- Running Claude in Parallel•Chapter draft. The full treatment of the technique the Version Control chapter introduces in one paragraph. Thesis: once AI stops being …
- Data: The Part of Your App That Can't Be Regenerated•Part I chapter draft. An immersive, single-sitting treatment of data for the non-developer — the one place a reader can go to understand the subject …
- The Arbiter's Seat•Chapter draft. Working title. The decision-process companion to Chapter 9, Additive Bias and Calling the Question: that chapter catalogs what Claude …
- What Success Looks Like to an Agent•Draft v0. Promoted out of the arbiter chapter, where it appeared as a single recovery move (“make asking a way of succeeding”) that turned …
- The Many Faces of Claude•Part I chapter draft, v0. The roster of surfaces a developer meets Claude through, what each is good and bad at, and how to choose. Two things make …
- Annotated Case Studies•Annotated real exchanges with Claude Code, captured from production work. Each study is the raw material a pattern chapter draws excerpts from — the …
- Briefings•The middle reference tier: self-contained background entries, half a page to two pages each, deeper than a glossary line and more focused than a …
- Words That Push Back•A companion cluster for Chapter 3. The rest of that chapter teaches you to decode the vocabulary Claude reaches for. This section runs the other …