I asked AI to fix 1 thing.. and suddenly it rebuilt half of my app.

The title says it all.

I wanted to move one button. That's it.

The button was in the wrong place on mobile view, so I gave AI what I thought was a very simple instruction:

Move this button here.

AI: Sure.

A few seconds later...

CSS changed. Good right?

No!!!! i noticed another component changed. Some spacing that was perfectly fine before? Also changed. And somehow a completely unrelated part of the page looked different.

Excuse me???

I asked you to move ONE BUTTON. Only that.

Welcome to vibe coding.

The dangerous part is how easy it feels.

When I first started vibe coding, I focused a lot on the output.

Does it work? Yes. Nice. Next.

But the more I build, the more I realise that this is probably one of the easiest ways to create problems for myself.

Because AI doesn't necessarily understand what you consider "out of scope"

If I say:

Fix the mobile layout.

I know what I mean.

But AI has to decide what I mean.

And sometimes its interpretation is:

Excellent. Today we renovate the entire house.

😭😭😭😭

So, now I changed a bit how I prompt

Now my prompts are becoming weirdly strict.

Instead of:

Fix the position of this button.

I write something closer to:

Fix the position of this button on mobile view only.
Do not change desktop behaviour.
Do not modify unrelated components.
Do not refactor existing code.
Keep the current styling.
Touch only the files required for this change.

Basically:

Fix this. But don't touch anything else.

And interestingly, this reminds me a lot of cybersecurity.

• We define scope for penetration testing.

• We define what systems can be touched.

• We define what techniques are allowed.

• We define what is explicitly out of scope.

Apparently... I need a scope of work for my AI too.

Vibe coding is teaching me something

I used to think getting better at vibe coding meant learning how to write better prompts so AI could generate better code. Now I think that's only half of it.

The other half is learning how to control what AI should NOT change.

Because sometimes the best prompt isn't:

Build this.

It's:

Change exactly this one thing.

And please...

Leave everything else alone.

<3 Dani