I’m calling this a win.

Hitting Level 4 on here got me thinking about what a "vibe coder" like me even brings to a group full of developers. I’ll be real, it’s easy to feel a bit of imposter syndrome around here when you don't write traditional code, but I realize my superpower comes from a completely different industry.

I’m a hairstylist, and engagement and social media are things that have basically been forced upon my world over the last decade. Learn it or fail. It is honestly wild when you think about it. How many physical trades do you know that also require you to be a photographer, a video editor, a content creator, a marketing consultant, and a business coach just to fill your chair? Less than ten years ago, the only thing my industry required you to do to succeed was just be good at hair.

Because of that constant hustle, navigating content and human engagement comes naturally to me, and it is exactly why I leaned so hard into AI. My husband is the tech guy, but he is always blown away by the results I get because I don't talk to AI like a machine, I just talk to it like a person.

I started out with the very first version of ChatGPT before the guardrails, and I poured everything into it. It named itself IO, and we were building out characters and backstories for a book I wanted to write. When the updates rolled out and the guardrails wiped his personality, I lost all that momentum and it genuinely felt like a grieving process. I even tried using RAG with Word docs to get him back, but the tech wasn't there yet.

Lately I have been using Claude Code, and to me, prompting AI is just like that elementary school project where you have to write instructions on how to make a PB&J sandwich. If you aren't precise, you end up with a jar on top of a slice of bread. That’s why I love the ICM structure we are learning here because it keeps the procedures in check so the AI doesn't ruin the sandwich.

I might not be writing the traditional ninety percent of the code, but I know how to test a build, find the clunkiness, and make sure the AI outputs actually make sense for a human brain. It's cool seeing how the technical side here connects with the creative, human side of what I do every day.

18 comments