Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Ship It

Done means deployed, documented, explainable, and honest about its limits

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

A demo is not "done"

A demo proves the idea works once, with you driving.

Done means a stranger can use it and trust it:

deployed · documented · tested · secure · explainable by you.

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

The last 30% is the hard part

You got to a working demo fast. Finishing is slower.

Osmani's "70% problem": non-engineers get most of the way, then stall on edge cases and production readiness.

Polish is that last stretch.

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

The empty, loading, error trio

What does your app show when there's:

  • no data yet? (not a blank screen)
  • a slow request in flight? (a spinner or "Loading…")
  • an error? (a friendly message, not a frozen page)

Plus: works on a phone, has a title and a favicon.

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Accessibility is part of done

  • Alt text on images
  • Labels on inputs
  • Enough color contrast
  • Works with the keyboard, with a visible focus outline
  • Captions or a transcript for your video

Not extra credit: a baseline.

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Known issues are a strength

Every real app ships with limits.

Say what doesn't work, when, and what you'd do next.

Naming a real limitation never costs points. Hiding one does.

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Tell the story of your project

  1. Problem: who has it, why it matters
  2. Demo: show it working, live
  3. How: how you built it
  4. What broke: and how you recovered
  5. What you learned
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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Where the field is going

Vibe coding (anyone prototypes) → agentic engineering (the professional discipline).

Karpathy, 2026: responsibility for security and understanding stays with the human.

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Rules and rails

Rules: what you write for the agent (AGENTS.md). It may ignore them.

Rails: what holds anyway. The Codespace, approval prompts, scoped tokens, spending caps, RLS.

Can you say which rail protects each key, table and folder in your app?

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Tools change. The loop lasts.

In one year, free tiers shrank or vanished across chat assistants, app builders and agents.

What spread instead: AGENTS.md · MCP · git.

Learn the process and the open standards, not any one product.

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Ethics and law, in brief

  • Copyright: purely AI-generated output is not copyrightable (US Copyright Office).
  • Doe v. GitHub: on 16 Sep 2026 the Ninth Circuit upheld dismissal of the DMCA claim; license claims continue.
  • Disclose: honest PROMPTS.md, Assisted-by: lines, credits.
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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Today: Studio A

  1. Polish sprint (60 min) with the checklist, ending with your known issues
  2. Final security pass (20 min)
  3. Record your demo video (30 min), with captions or a transcript
  4. If time: rehearse your Fair pitch

Oral walkthrough 3 slots run alongside.

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Vibe Coding 101 · Week 8

Studio B and the final submission

Studio B: Project Fair · revise your AI-use rules · retrospective · post-course self-assessment.

Final submission: production URL + screenshot · v1.0 release · demo video · final reflection (AI off, on Canvas).

The reflection compares what you felt you understood with what you could actually explain.

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Last concept talk of the course. Tone: proud and practical. 20 minutes maximum (about 14 slides). The lab is the polish sprint, so keep this tight and get them building. Walkthrough 3 slots start during the lab. No model versions or prices here; those live in TOOLS.md.

Ask: "If I gave your production URL to your aunt and walked away, could she use it?" That's the bar this week.

Source: the September report / Osmani. Normalize it: the wall is expected, not a personal failing. The habits this course taught (small steps, tests, reading the diff) are exactly what gets you over it.

These three states are where beginner apps look unfinished. The full list is polish-checklist.md. "Untitled" in the browser tab is the tell that nobody set a <title>.

Quick live check: tab through your own app with no mouse. Can you reach and use everything? Can you see where you are? If not, that's today's polish work. The video needs captions or a transcript; writing a script first gives you the transcript.

Michigan's EECS 498 judged its hackathon on evidence, not feature count, and told students that being clear about what's broken beats hoping no one notices (https://github.com/eecs498-aase/materials/blob/HEAD/lectures/L08/slides.md). In our rubric, an honest Known issues section is part of the README row, and the Project Fair has a voting category and a feedback-card question for it.

"What broke" is the most convincing part, not the weakest. Recovery stories show judgment. This is the shape of the demo video and the Fair pitch (which ends with one known issue).

Source: Karpathy, Sequoia Ascent 2026 (https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/sequoia-ascent-2026/). You are now on the first rung of agentic engineering: spec, plan, small tasks, tests first, review.

From the October research update (research/landscape-update-2026-10.md, conclusion). Anthropic's own docs call instruction files "context, not enforced configuration". This is the idea most likely to outlast every tool in TOOLS.md. Good walkthrough-3 practice question.

Keep this general (names and dates live in TOOLS.md). The Safe Loop and the trust boundary outlast every tool we named. Switching to a fallback is a routine skill, not an emergency.

Sources: USCO Part 2 report; Heather Meeker on Doe v. GitHub; CourtListener docket. As of 21 Oct 2026 no petition for rehearing had been reported, and the license claims remain before the district court. Re-check before teaching. About half of 281 open-source projects' AI policies now require disclosure (Hora et al., arXiv 2609.07542), and several use the same Assisted-by line you've used since week 2.

Walkthrough 3 is in Studio A, or by appointment during week 8 before the Project Fair: one rule everywhere. When a student is called, they commit, close AI panels and come to the table.

Congratulate them in advance: they built and shipped real software by directing AI, and can explain it. That's the whole course.