Europe 2026
Vibe Engineering Effect Apps — Michael Arnaldi, Effectful
Overview
This talk explores the "Vibe Engineering Effect" by demonstrating how to build applications from scratch using AI agents, focusing on practical development workflows rather than hype. The core thesis is that by structuring projects to leverage AI effectively, developers can significantly reduce manual coding, even for complex library-level tasks. The session emphasizes practical techniques for integrating AI into the development process, particularly when working with new or unfamiliar codebases.
Who should watch
- AI engineers and developers looking to integrate AI agents into their workflows.
- Product Managers and builders interested in prototyping and shipping AI-powered features.
- Developers working with new or complex codebases who want to leverage AI for faster development.
- Those interested in practical applications of AI in software development beyond basic code generation.
Key takeaways
- AI models lack continuous learning; their knowledge is fixed after training, necessitating architectural solutions for incorporating new information.
- Effective AI-assisted development involves architecting around the limitations of context windows and outdated model knowledge.
- Giving AI agents direct access to codebases, such as cloning entire repositories, is a powerful method for enabling them to learn and replicate patterns.
- Developers should focus on setting up repositories and defining patterns that allow AI models to operate efficiently, rather than solely writing code manually.
- The process of building with AI involves iterative refinement, creating patterns from explored code, and using linters to guide the AI's output.
- For complex, multi-step operations like user registration, workflows or clustering solutions are essential to guarantee completion even if servers fail.
- AI models can be surprisingly effective at library-level coding and understanding undocumented codebases when provided with the right context and structure.
- The session demonstrates building a functional HTTP API with Effect and SQLite from an empty repository using AI assistance.
Notable quotes
*I've also have not been coding by hand since about late this summer.*
*The models have become very good I've said it by myself I'm not writing code by hand since at a minimum six or eight months.*
*The reality is with LLMs like people treat them like a human brain but they are very different.*
Unofficial community note. Prefer the recording for nuance.