Coding with Claude for Post-Pros Part 1

A Beginner’s Guide to Vibe Coding with Claude Code

Vibe coding is transforming how anyone can build websites and software. But how do you actually get started, how do you build your first project, and why should you bother in the first place?

If the term “vibe coding” is new to you, you’re not alone. Coined by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy in February 2025 – and named Collins Dictionary Word of the Year – it describes building software by telling an AI assistant what you want in plain language, rather than writing code yourself. You describe the goal, the AI writes the code, and you iterate from there. Think of it like directing an edit by giving notes rather than sitting in the chair yourself.

My 5-Month Vibe-Coding Journey

Claude Code has changed my life. For well over a decade, I’ve had an endless stream of business, software, and website ideas rattling around. The blocker to creating them was always having a technical co-founder who could turn my ideas into reality. Now with a $20/month Claude Code subscription, I have that technical co-founder at my fingertips.

In the past 5 months, my vibe coding has produced apps like Transcriber/Translator for foreign language subtitles (pictured above), Tidy Media Manager for consolidating Premiere Pro projects, and PaperEdit.app for turning transcripts into timelines. Thanks to a partnership with EditingTools.io, you can even buy Tidy Media Manager on the Apple App Store. Websites, tools, and more ideas are in development – and all of these are being actively iterated on.

In this article, you’ll find everything I’ve learned about vibe coding over those 5 months – from getting set up, to working through a project, to the honest pitfalls nobody warns you about.

Lingo Quick Reference

Before diving deeper, here are a few terms you’ll encounter throughout this article:

What You Should Know From the Start

While vibe coding is enormous fun and very creatively rewarding, it has its limitations and ramifications. Before diving into the how-to, here’s what every post-production professional should understand going in.

Not every idea is worth building. The new super-power to build anything you can think of can lead you to think that you should build everything you can think of. As Jeff Goldblum taught us in Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Your problem might not be everyone’s problem. Don’t let that stop you – but go into it with your eyes open.

Ideas worth building are those that solve YOUR problem. If you’re building just for yourself to automate a tedious problem you perform regularly, then that’s the perfect place to begin. But once it’s up and running, you’re going to ask yourself, “Hey, I have a working prototype. Let’s sell this!” That gets us to the next point.

A working prototype is not a real product. While you can probably make something that “works” in an hour or two, a Python script with an ugly GUI on your system may break on another person’s computer. It lacks copyright protection, security features, a comprehensible workflow for outsiders, an update mechanism, and many other features expected of modern commercial software.

You will make stupid mistakes. For example, my first Swift apps didn’t work on some Mac OS machines – not because there was anything wrong in the code, but because a build flag in Xcode that I didn’t know existed was set by Claude to only work on specific systems. Once I changed the flag, the app worked everywhere. Anyone with coding experience would have spotted that in an instant.

There’s nothing passive about software development. While it can be tempting to think you’ll vibe-code your way to a little passive income, do you really want to be responsible for customer service, bug fixes, feature updates, tutorials, documentation, and marketing? Building is easy – maintenance is hard.

All that said, let’s talk about giving this a go!

Think Like a Creative Problem Solver

What I’ve enjoyed most about vibe coding is the ability to apply my editorial creative problem-solving abilities – honed over a couple of decades of day-to-day labour – to creating with code.

There are many parallels here, and if you give this a go, you’ll feel at home as a post-production professional:

Key Takeaways

By the end of this Insight, you should understand how to:

Related Mixing Light Insights

Why Claude Code?

Before diving in, you might be wondering why this article focuses on Claude Code from Anthropic and not ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or any other LLM.