Wait, was ur website VIBECODED?

Wait. was this website vibe-coded? Ai-Tells.

generating a website with AI can actually work great if you stay very involved. when you don’t, I think it’s pretty clear.

There’s a painfully obvious list of “tells” — visual cues that a human couldn’t bother to stick around.

I start by vibe-coding pages ALL the time. But, then I keep working on it.

I often put some of this in my agents file as a starting point of things to avoid. But of course, like all good agents, my agent ignores my agents file then apologizes later.

Here’s seven of them:

One: EVERYTHING is a card. An inception of cards. Boxes around boxes around boxes.

Two: Three boxes of “features”. Instead of thinking through how to present information as written text, or an infographic, it’s tossed into three side-by-side cards.

Three: So. Much. Fade. In. New section? Fade in. 2 second delays. Transitions for every word. Content is there just to JUMP AT YA.

Four: Gradients… have you seen backrooms? It’s like that. Gradients made by some alien force that never really understood why gradients are used.

Five: 10,000 different fonts, bolding, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, h900s. Have text? It’ll have STRUCTURE whether you want it to or not.

Six: 6️⃣ 🎉 emojis. ⛱️🫶🔥🤑 it’s the f@#$ing emoji movie on a webpage.

seven: “No fluff”. Somewhere, the words “no fluff” are there. — No fluff. I swear.

The fluff machine can’t generate fluff without claiming that it’s not fluff.

It’s somehow philosophical.

what else am I missing?

finally, if there’s one thing you try to fix, PLEASE, fix this. Leaving the copy ai-generated.

I use it as a placeholder (better than Lorem Ipsum?) but then I go through line by line and rewrite everything.

It’s often by far the most time-consuming part. It’s also the clearest tell.

No fluff.