Susie Johns

A big part of my week is spent talking to early-stage founders about how they handle login, access, and identity, and there is a pattern I keep noticing that I want to understand better.

Almost everyone puts auth off at the start, which honestly makes sense when you are still trying to prove the product matters at all.

Hey everyone quick this week update for Browser Notes https://browsernotes.app.

I'm a veteran and solo founder with no formal coding background. Spent the last few weeks directing Replit's AI agent (with Claude as a strategic/QA partner) to build a real production app, entirely from my phone.

The part that surprised me: the "vibe" is the easy 20%. The other 80% was the same discipline any build needs catching bugs by hand (missing auto-capitalization, a timezone off-by-one, a file upload limit rejecting real phone photos), refusing to accept "it's fixed" without proof, running full walkthroughs section by section, chasing root causes instead of patching symptoms.

That's made me rethink what "vibe coding" even means. It's not skipping the engineering discipline it's relocating it. Instead of writing code, you're writing precise instructions, reviewing output critically, and doing QA like a hawk. If anything it demands more discipline, not less, because you can't rely on catching mistakes by reading your own code you have to actually test everything.

For others who've directed an AI agent instead of hand-coding: has your experience matched that, or did you find a different bottleneck? What ended up being the hardest part for you the instructing, the reviewing, or something else entirely?