Experiments in blueprint-driven development as an alternative to vibe-coding

I recently tried something similar: first I had an in depth chat with Claude in Claude desktop about the system and its requirements and design considerations. Then I asked it to draw up a design doc and component and sequence diagrams and abstract interfaces (using MCP tools to write to files and generate the diagrams).

I reviewed. We discussed these and finetuned them. Then I asked for a spec for implementation.

I gave the spec to Claude code to implement.

The first implementation had a key problem due to a misunderstanding of a new feature in a key API that the system is building on.

After reviewing it, I updated the spec with specific API version information as well as a clarification of the new feature - about half a page of spec.

I rolled back the first implementation. Asked for the base of the project with specifics more to my liking (choice of webserver, some packages layout decisions, etc.) then asked it to implement the spec again.

I got a pretty good implementation - still reviewing and testing it.

All in all: in one weekend 6h session I got done what probably would have taken me a month or two of weekends to do.