Vibe Coding Is Not Design
Yes, Product Managers should absolutely vibe code prototypes, and... vibe coding is not Design. It's thinking out loud with a rendering engine. That's actually a great thing.
A PM who can make something look real enough to react to is a better collaborator, not a threat. This isn't new. We had this exact conversation when PMs started making wireframes. Visual thinking accelerates communication. The wireframe was never the problem.
Treating the wireframe as the solution was always the failure mode. When "we have a thing that looks like the answer" collapsed into "we have the answer," the actual Design work never happened.
Vibe coding is the same trap with better rendering. When a generated UI looks finished, it's psychologically harder to treat it as a starting point. But looking finished and being right are completely different things.
Design is the process that closes that gap: generating many ideas before committing to any, holding them lightly, and running them through criteria that map back to actual human needs. That's not a software feature. It's an acquired professional skill. Most people, including very smart PMs, were never trained in it.
The real risk of vibe coding is the shortcut it normalizes: from "I had an idea" to "we have a design," skipping the messy generative middle where the best solutions actually live. If we recognize that risk up front, we can view the prototypes as the raw material they are.
Designers should welcome PMs who vibe code their thinking. PMs should welcome the design process that turns that thinking into a solution. That's not a turf war. That's a team.
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