The Post-Vibe Playbook · 6 min read

You shipped on vibes.
Here's how to keep going.

Five concrete moves between you and a real product. No PM dogma, no Scrum, no Notion-template hell. Just the smallest set of habits that stop you from shipping random things to people who deserve better.

TL;DR

01Stop losing user feedback. Pick one place that everything funnels into. Cluster the noise into themes weekly. Decide what's a pattern vs. a vocal minority — most loud feedback is the latter.
02Write specs before you build. Even a 5-line spec beats no spec. Write: what's the user problem, what does success look like, what's explicitly out of scope. Future-you and future-Cursor will both thank you.
03Build a roadmap that isn't a Notion doc. A real roadmap links each item to (a) the user signals that justify it and (b) the outcome it should move. "Build X because users keep asking" is not enough. "Build X because 23 users in onboarding asked for it, expected to lift activation 8pp" is.
04Form hypotheses, not opinions. Before you build, declare: "I think doing X will cause Y, measured by Z." If Y doesn't happen, you learned something. If you didn't declare it upfront, you just shipped vibes again.
05Measure outcomes, not output. Pick one north-star metric. Pick 3 supporting metrics. Look at them weekly. If shipped features aren't moving them, stop shipping more — fix the ones you have or find the right thing.

MOVE 01

Stop losing user feedback

The pattern

Your feedback is in 12 places: X DMs, support inbox, install reviews, Slack #feedback, a Loom your friend sent, three voice notes. You remember roughly 30% of it. You act on roughly 5%.

The fix

Pick one place that everything funnels into. Cluster the noise into themes weekly. Decide what's a pattern vs. a vocal minority — most loud feedback is the latter.

Do this today

Open a single doc or inbox called "Feedback" — yes, today
Walk every channel once. Paste everything in. Don't filter yet.
Cluster: tag each item with a theme (e.g. "onboarding", "pricing", "export")
Sort themes by count. The top 3 are your real backlog. Everything else waits.

How Specky helps: Specky connects to Slack, Intercom, your support inbox, X, and more — and dumps every signal into a single Product Graph. It clusters themes automatically and surfaces what's growing this week.

MOVE 02

Write specs before you build

The pattern

You opened Cursor, wrote three paragraphs of context, sent four follow-up Looms, and the agent still shipped the wrong thing. Or it shipped the right thing and you broke it next week because there was no record of what it was supposed to do.

The fix

Even a 5-line spec beats no spec. Write: what's the user problem, what does success look like, what's explicitly out of scope. Future-you and future-Cursor will both thank you.

Do this today

Before the next feature, write 5 bullets: Problem · Users · Success metric · Out of scope · Open questions
Save it somewhere you can find again — not in chat history
Paste it into your code-gen tool as the system prompt. Watch hallucinations drop.

How Specky helps: Type a one-line feature idea. Specky returns a full PRD in ~2 minutes, with every claim cited to actual user feedback you connected. Edit inline, ship the spec to Cursor or Claude Code.

MOVE 03

Build a roadmap that isn't a Notion doc

The pattern

Your roadmap is whichever customer screamed loudest yesterday. Or whichever idea excited you in the shower this morning. Neither survives a co-founder conversation, an investor update, or a hire.

The fix

A real roadmap links each item to (a) the user signals that justify it and (b) the outcome it should move. "Build X because users keep asking" is not enough. "Build X because 23 users in onboarding asked for it, expected to lift activation 8pp" is.

Do this today

List your top 5 in-flight or next-up items
For each, write: who asked + roughly how many + what outcome it moves
Anything that can't be filled in honestly: cut it or move it to "someday"

How Specky helps: Specky's roadmap is built from your Product Graph. Every item links back to the signals — Slack threads, support tickets, Gong calls — that justified it. Defend any priority in one click.

MOVE 04

Form hypotheses, not opinions

The pattern

You ship features because they sound fun. Some land. Most don't. You can't tell which, because you never said upfront what "landing" meant.

The fix

Before you build, declare: "I think doing X will cause Y, measured by Z." If Y doesn't happen, you learned something. If you didn't declare it upfront, you just shipped vibes again.

Do this today

Pick one in-flight feature
Write the hypothesis in one sentence: "If we ship X, then [metric] will [move by Y] within [N] weeks"
If you can't, you don't know what you're shipping. Pause and figure that out first.

How Specky helps: Specky's experiments view is built around hypothesis → metric → result. Link experiments to roadmap items, see which bets paid off, and feed the wins back into the graph automatically.

MOVE 05

Measure outcomes, not output

The pattern

You shipped 14 things last month. Did any move signups, retention, or revenue? You don't know. The dopamine of "shipped" is doing all the work.

The fix

Pick one north-star metric. Pick 3 supporting metrics. Look at them weekly. If shipped features aren't moving them, stop shipping more — fix the ones you have or find the right thing.

Do this today

Pick a north-star: signups, activation, weekly active, paid conversion — one number
Set 3 supporting metrics underneath it
Block 30 minutes every Monday to look at them. Just look. No new features that week unless you do.

How Specky helps: Specky's OKR + outcome views track whether shipped features moved your numbers, and surface quietly slipping goals before they're embarrassing.

The vibe was never the problem.

Vibe coding is wildly good. It compressed six weeks of MVP into a weekend and put a working product in your users' hands before anyone could tell you it wouldn't work.

What it doesn't do — and was never going to do — is tell you which of the 47 things on your plate today is the one that actually moves your business.

That part is product management. And until now it's required either a hire you can't afford or a Notion graveyard you won't maintain. Specky is the third option.

Try it on your own product.

Connect Slack, Linear, or GitHub in 5 minutes. Specky will pull in your real user signals and you'll see your first cited PRD within the hour.

Start your trial Back to overview

Specky for Vibe Coders

The Post-Vibe Playbook · 6 min read

You shipped on vibes.
Here's how to keep going.

TL;DR

01Stop losing user feedback. Pick one place that everything funnels into. Cluster the noise into themes weekly. Decide what's a pattern vs. a vocal minority — most loud feedback is the latter.
02Write specs before you build. Even a 5-line spec beats no spec. Write: what's the user problem, what does success look like, what's explicitly out of scope. Future-you and future-Cursor will both thank you.
03Build a roadmap that isn't a Notion doc. A real roadmap links each item to (a) the user signals that justify it and (b) the outcome it should move. "Build X because users keep asking" is not enough. "Build X because 23 users in onboarding asked for it, expected to lift activation 8pp" is.
04Form hypotheses, not opinions. Before you build, declare: "I think doing X will cause Y, measured by Z." If Y doesn't happen, you learned something. If you didn't declare it upfront, you just shipped vibes again.
05Measure outcomes, not output. Pick one north-star metric. Pick 3 supporting metrics. Look at them weekly. If shipped features aren't moving them, stop shipping more — fix the ones you have or find the right thing.

MOVE 01

Stop losing user feedback

The pattern

Your feedback is in 12 places: X DMs, support inbox, install reviews, Slack #feedback, a Loom your friend sent, three voice notes. You remember roughly 30% of it. You act on roughly 5%.

The fix

Pick one place that everything funnels into. Cluster the noise into themes weekly. Decide what's a pattern vs. a vocal minority — most loud feedback is the latter.

Do this today

Open a single doc or inbox called "Feedback" — yes, today
Walk every channel once. Paste everything in. Don't filter yet.
Cluster: tag each item with a theme (e.g. "onboarding", "pricing", "export")
Sort themes by count. The top 3 are your real backlog. Everything else waits.

MOVE 02

Write specs before you build

The pattern

The fix

Even a 5-line spec beats no spec. Write: what's the user problem, what does success look like, what's explicitly out of scope. Future-you and future-Cursor will both thank you.

Do this today

Before the next feature, write 5 bullets: Problem · Users · Success metric · Out of scope · Open questions
Save it somewhere you can find again — not in chat history
Paste it into your code-gen tool as the system prompt. Watch hallucinations drop.

MOVE 03

Build a roadmap that isn't a Notion doc

The pattern

Your roadmap is whichever customer screamed loudest yesterday. Or whichever idea excited you in the shower this morning. Neither survives a co-founder conversation, an investor update, or a hire.

The fix

Do this today

List your top 5 in-flight or next-up items
For each, write: who asked + roughly how many + what outcome it moves
Anything that can't be filled in honestly: cut it or move it to "someday"

MOVE 04

Form hypotheses, not opinions

The pattern

You ship features because they sound fun. Some land. Most don't. You can't tell which, because you never said upfront what "landing" meant.

The fix

Before you build, declare: "I think doing X will cause Y, measured by Z." If Y doesn't happen, you learned something. If you didn't declare it upfront, you just shipped vibes again.

Do this today

Pick one in-flight feature
Write the hypothesis in one sentence: "If we ship X, then [metric] will [move by Y] within [N] weeks"
If you can't, you don't know what you're shipping. Pause and figure that out first.

MOVE 05

Measure outcomes, not output

The pattern

You shipped 14 things last month. Did any move signups, retention, or revenue? You don't know. The dopamine of "shipped" is doing all the work.

The fix

Pick one north-star metric. Pick 3 supporting metrics. Look at them weekly. If shipped features aren't moving them, stop shipping more — fix the ones you have or find the right thing.

Do this today

Pick a north-star: signups, activation, weekly active, paid conversion — one number
Set 3 supporting metrics underneath it
Block 30 minutes every Monday to look at them. Just look. No new features that week unless you do.

How Specky helps: Specky's OKR + outcome views track whether shipped features moved your numbers, and surface quietly slipping goals before they're embarrassing.

The vibe was never the problem.

Vibe coding is wildly good. It compressed six weeks of MVP into a weekend and put a working product in your users' hands before anyone could tell you it wouldn't work.

What it doesn't do — and was never going to do — is tell you which of the 47 things on your plate today is the one that actually moves your business.

That part is product management. And until now it's required either a hire you can't afford or a Notion graveyard you won't maintain. Specky is the third option.

Try it on your own product.

Connect Slack, Linear, or GitHub in 5 minutes. Specky will pull in your real user signals and you'll see your first cited PRD within the hour.

Start your trial Back to overview

You shipped on vibes.Here's how to keep going.

Stop losing user feedback

Write specs before you build

Build a roadmap that isn't a Notion doc

Form hypotheses, not opinions

Measure outcomes, not output

The vibe was never the problem.

Try it on your own product.

You shipped on vibes.Here's how to keep going.

Stop losing user feedback

Write specs before you build

Build a roadmap that isn't a Notion doc

Form hypotheses, not opinions

Measure outcomes, not output

The vibe was never the problem.

Try it on your own product.

You shipped on vibes.
Here's how to keep going.

You shipped on vibes.
Here's how to keep going.