What Is Vibe Coding? A Beginner's Guide to Cursor and Claude Code

Vibe coding is a way of building software where you describe what you want in plain language and an AI writes the code. You try the result, say what's wrong or what to change, and the AI fixes it. Andrej Karpathy popularized the term in early 2025 to describe exactly that: coding by "giving in to the vibes", focused on the outcome rather than every line.

For business owners without a technical background, it opens an interesting door: building small custom tools (a quote calculator, a booking page, a script that tidies up files) without hiring a developer for each one.

What you can build (and what you shouldn't)

Good first projects:

Simple web pages: a landing page, a form, a pricing page.
Internal tools: calculators, converters, document generators.
Scripts that automate chores on your computer, like renaming files or merging spreadsheets.
Prototypes to show an idea before investing in it.

Handle with care, or get professional help:

Anything that processes payments, passwords or customer personal data.
Apps with many simultaneous users.
Software your business depends on and that you can't review.

AI writes code that works, but not always code that's secure or easy to maintain. If you don't understand what it does, have someone review it before customers rely on it.

The two tools: Cursor and Claude Code

Cursor is a code editor, built on VS Code, with AI built in. Its agent mode takes requests in plain language, edits multiple files, runs commands and shows you what changed so you can accept or reject it. It's the most visual option: files, changes and results in one window.

Claude Code is Anthropic's coding agent. It started in the terminal and now also integrates with editors and has a web version. Give it a task and it explores your project, proposes a plan, writes the code and tests it. It's especially comfortable for longer, multi-step work.

You don't have to choose forever; plenty of people use both. If you've never coded, start with Cursor, because seeing the files helps you understand what's happening. Both have paid plans, so check current pricing on their websites before deciding.

Your first project in an afternoon

1. Pick something small and useful

For example: "a web page with a quote calculator for my cleaning business: the customer enters square footage and frequency and sees the price." It's small, testable in a browser, and genuinely useful.

2. Set up

Install Cursor from its official website, or Claude Code following Anthropic's documentation.
Create an empty folder for the project and open it.
If prompted, install Git. It's what lets you roll back when something breaks.

3. Write a strong first prompt

Results depend heavily on how you ask. A good first prompt covers:

What it is and who it's for: "A quote calculator for customers of my cleaning company."
What it must do, step by step: "The user enters square feet, picks a frequency (weekly, biweekly, one-off) and sees the price including tax."
Business rules: "Base price $0.12/sq ft, 15% off weekly, 8% off biweekly, minimum $50."
Technical constraints: "A single HTML file, no server, works on mobile."

4. Test, fix, repeat

Open the result and use it the way a customer would. When something's wrong, be precise: "If I enter 0, it shows $0 instead of the $50 minimum" works far better than "it's broken."

5. Save every working version

Each time something works, ask the tool to make a Git commit. If the next change breaks things, you can return to the good version in seconds.

Project rules: the trick that improves results most

Both tools let you save standing instructions the AI always reads. In Cursor these are rules (files in .cursor/rules); in Claude Code it's a CLAUDE.md file in the project root. You might write:

"Explain each change in one plain-language sentence."
"Don't add new libraries without asking me."
"Before finishing, check the page works on mobile."
"Never put API keys in code; use environment variables."

With good rules, the AI stops repeating the same mistakes and you stop repeating the same instructions.

Beginner mistakes

Asking for too much at once. "Build me an Airbnb clone" ends in a huge project nobody understands. Build in small pieces.
Accepting changes without testing. Test after every change, not after ten.
Pasting keys and passwords into chat or code. Use environment variables and never commit a .env file to a public repository.
Pushing on when the AI is stuck. If it keeps circling the same error, roll back to the last good version and explain the problem differently, or start a fresh conversation.

Vibe coding plus automation

Vibe coding pairs well with tools like n8n. n8n connects services (WhatsApp, email, calendar, spreadsheets) and vibe coding lets you build the missing pieces: a small booking page that posts to an n8n webhook, or a script that cleans data before it's processed. For concrete ideas, see 7 AI automations for small businesses.

Keep going

The AgentKiosk pack includes a vibe-coding kit with ready-made rules for Cursor and Claude Code, designed to make the AI work more safely and tidily, alongside seven n8n agents for small businesses.

Prefer to start with something free? Download our WhatsApp agent for n8n with a step-by-step PDF guide.