Vibe Coding Rules: Build Side Projects from Your Phone Using Claude Code Without Reading Code

An experienced software engineer with a decade of experience posted a detailed workflow for what they call "vibe coding" — building side projects using Claude Code entirely from a phone, without ever reading the generated code. The post outlines a structured process that prioritizes planning and safety checks to make this hands-off approach viable.

Core Workflow

• Start in plan mode. Read the plan, understand it as much as possible. If unclear, ask. The author uses the command 4. Tell Claude what to change repeatedly to ask questions like "What is
  about? What does that mean?"
• Go back and forth with the agent. Plan mode is the most important phase — good and bad decisions cascade and multiply.
• Break plans into small chunks. If the plan is too large to comprehend, ask the agent to break it into smaller digestible pieces and process them one at a time.
• Commit everything to git after each plan is complete. The author suggests creating a skill or memory that auto-commits. This enables rollback if something breaks. Note: database backups are separate.
• Generate test cases visible in the plan. You don't need to read test code, but a list like it checks two positive integers, it checks passing a negative value, it checks not passing any value gives confidence and prevents regressions.

Advanced Safety: Three Subagents

For complex changes, spin up three subagents to:

• critically review the plan
• do a security review
• do a testing audit

Database Caution

The author advises always doing a database backup (or having scheduled backups) before letting the agent touch prod data. Rollbacks prevent disasters like accidental deletion.

Auto Mode

Once the upfront work (planning, git, tests, reviews) is done, the author enables auto mode and lets the agent run. They also give the agent access to Chrome DevTools MCP (or similar) for end-to-end testing post-deployment.

The result: "You can build something that no one uses."