I gave a short talk at the latest Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group (RMAIIG) session on Vibe Coding. I argued that what’s missing from vibe coding today is a source of truth. Chat and clicking around GUIs are great for prototypes, but these mechanisms fall short when defining complex logic and long-running backend functionality. They also fall short when iterating on software products, something that happens all the time. In the vibe coding products of today, the only source of truth is code.
I used a familiar example to demonstrate this: building a house. You wouldn’t build a house based on a conversation, then go inspect it when it’s built. The conversation leads to drawings that all stakeholders can easily read and iterate on. It’s only after the drawings are approved that building begins.
Fortunately, software development already uses a battle-tested mechanism to define a source of truth: requirements and specifications. That’s been our inspiration for the interface for defining software at durable.ai. It’s immediately familiar, but scalable to defining long-running processes or complex logic.
