At Being Guided we help organisations who engage in a high-value, high-touch sell to increase sales effectiveness by combining four things: Design Thinking⁸, Value Engineering⁹, Vibe Coding¹ and AI Sales Coaching²¹.

In this Journal post I am focused on Vibe Coding. In my agency I helping our customers to take the first steps with Vibe Coding: delivering apps that are designed to initially co-exist with first generation Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps - notably Salesforce.

Vibe Coding, defined.

Vibe Coding is a term first used by industry analyst Andrej Karparthy¹ to describe how you can generate software code by using AI to describe apps using natural language, where the term 'vibe' comes from "fully giving into the vibes, and forget that the code even exists".

Although not universally agreed, at Being Guided we see Vibe Coding as something that was initially called 'Declarative Programming', established by Robert Kowalski, whose work in the early 1970s—in particular, his influential paper Predicate Logic as a Programming Language (1974²⁴).

Later, Salesforce adopted the Declarative Programming paradigm to promote its Salesforce Lightning Platform (formerly Force.com) as a way to build apps via point-and-click tools, emphasising configuration rather than traditional coding.

By around 2015, Declarative Programming was also described as No-Code and Low-Code app development²⁵. Consistent with the more recent term Vibe Coding, the concept here was 'Citizen Developers' working as non-programmers who build Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps²⁶.

Vibe Coding is for everyone. Even our largest customer, the UK National Health Service (NHS) is embracing next generation Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps built with low-cost AI-powered Vibe Coding alongside Salesforce Lightning Platform. Elimating a £604million deficit¹¹ at the NHS has some influence here!

The Salesforce Lightning Platform is widely recognised as a robust, No-Code/Low-Code System of Record (SOR), enabling organisations to manage diverse, core business data and processes declaratively.

Native Salesforce tools, such as Lightning App Builder, Flow, and Dynamic Forms, allow for rapid, No-Code customisation and automation, making design accessible to both business users and administrators without traditional programming skills (Khan & Ahmad, 2022²³).

Declarative tools within Salesforce, like Flow, and App Builder, empower users to create custom workflows, automate processes, and design user interfaces without code. These tools ensure that extensions remain upgrade-safe, maintainable, and tightly integrated with the Salesforce security and data model.

Further back, over one hundred years ago, Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) was a true pioneering management theorist whose work emphasised collaboration, integration, and the empowerment of individuals within organizations.

Follett advocated for “power with” rather than “power over,” promoting participatory decision-making, cross-functional teamwork, and the idea that authority should be rooted in expertise and situational needs rather than rigid hierarchies (Follett, 1924¹⁸; Graham, 1995¹⁹).

Follett’s insights into participatory management, integration, and empowerment are highly relevant to the Vibe Coding paradigm. Both approaches seek to flatten hierarchies, foster collaboration, and enable those with the most relevant expertise to drive innovation.

The difference is that, in 2025, AI-powered platforms have made this vision technically feasible at scale, transforming not just management but the very process of software creation. What began as Declarative Programming has evolved into No-Code and now, Vibe Coding.

No-Code. No problem.

Vibe Coding can lead to ther rapid creation of next generation SaaS apps. To quote leading industry analyst at Forrester, John Bratincevic¹⁰:

“Nobody wants to admit that their own death is coming soon. Low-code has been swinging the pendulum away from off-the-shelf applications and toward custom development for years. There are good reasons for this. When practical, fit-to-purpose software is best. And the lower cost, risk, and lead time of low-code development - coupled with an expanded developer pool, easier integration, management of apps on a common platform, leveraged licensing, etc. - makes it much harder to justify off-the-shelf software licenses and vendor sprawl. AI-powered enterprises will 'build' software instead of 'buy' it — and many applications in enterprise portfolios will consolidate onto low-code AppGen platforms."

For AppGen now read Vibe Coding. For low-code now read the strapline for Vibe Coding: 'No code. just words'. As illustrated above, I see AI-powered CRM apps as replacing Salesforce and other first generation Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps.

Vibe Coding for creating CRM and other SaaS apps is an AI-driven, No-Code First approach to software development. This is where users can describe their desired CRM or other SaaS app in plain, natural language prompts or instructions.

In defining Vibe Coding Andrej Karparthy¹ also described this as Software 3.0 as the third era of software as prompts, vibes and conversations. Software 1.o is the first era of hand-written code and Software 2.0 is the second era of data plus machine learning.

From natural language inputs, AI automatically instantly generates a fully functioning SaaS app, initially as an extension to established SaaS apps, such as Salesforce. Over time, as Vibe Coding technology matures, these No-Code innovations will be complete with frontend, backend and supporting infrastructure, without requiring manual coding or technical expertise.

AI-powered Vibe Coding should serve as an augmentation tool for Software Developers rather than as their replacement, but fewer required, nevertheless. The emergence of the Vibe Coder is going to creating a new environment for co-designing apps.

The Software Developer role shifts from pure coder to 'orchestrator, curator and tester', moving beyond writing every function by hand. Part of this new role includes security and quality of what has been generated via Vibe Coding.

Think of digital innovation and software publishing now as more business analysis, less software development. A Vibe Coder is more like a business analyst or subject matter expert, than a tech architect or programmer.

Extend or replace.

With Vibe Coding the extent to which the Vibe Coder can create a fully working app with less input by expert Software Developers (see Pair Programming below) depends on the context and complexity of the app build. Although the long term future of Vibe Coding is mostly a focus on replacing first generation SaaS apps, in the short term, it is about extending existing IT.

For example, an existing Salesforce CRM environment may be where extending this technology to reach more customers, partners, suppliers or employees may be a low risk starting point for Vibe Coding and integration new apps.

To extend Salesforce with native Apex and Lightning Web Component (LWC) technology there is a simple way to apply Vibe Coding, where a Software Developer orchestrates a Large Lanaguage Model (LLM) to generate code step-by-step cut-and-paste directly into Visual Studio.

Vibe Coding in practice.

Let's explore extend or replace further. In this example we are Vibe Coding a CRM app. This can extend to other apps on a common business logic: Project Management; Talent Management; Professional Services Automation, and so forth. 'CRM Pro' then becomes 'CRM Plus'.

The first step here is engaging in a Mutual Value Discovery to determine where Vibe Coding can generate a next generation SaaS app at a fraction of the cost of existing technologies, yet must be result in a solid user experience and secure, scalable IT. It could be extend or replace.

At Being Guided we are now helping enterprises adopt Vibe Coding for next generation CRM apps, where non-programmers, or Vibe Coders, collaborate with Software Developers under the guidance of an AI Agent. It's a new kind of 'Pair Programming'.

The AI technology includes:

• Database Setup (eg. Supabase PostgreSQL)
• AI Large Language Models
• AI Integration
• Design System
• Email System
• Authentication
• Analytics
• Storage

AI-powered Vibe Coding is capable of generating code across the entire software development stack. This starts with prototyping with an inherent ability to quickly translate natural language prompts into fully functional code (Chen et al., 2021³).

Vibe Coded apps generated by AI must meet key questions around potential issues: security vulnerabilities, or performance bottlenecks - all critical in production-class applications (Dahlin, 2021⁴). So our Discovery Engagements at Being Guided are truly minful of these realities.

At Being Guided we are creating this App Framework called 'CRM Pro'. Here we started with a simple Data Model of typical Entities (Objects) you would find in a CRM app: Leads; Contacts; Accounts; and, Opportunities.

Humans-in-the-loop.

In The AI Con, Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna offer a sharp critique of the current state of AI, particularly focusing on the hype, misrepresentation, and ethical pitfalls that pervade the field (Bender & Hanna, 20241⁶).

One of The AI Con's central arguments is that much of what is marketed as AI is a collection of statistical tricks and pattern-matching systems, often oversold as possessing alleged human-like intelligence. The authors went further to describe the Large Language Models (LLMs) that underly Vibe Coding technologies as 'stochastic parrots'.

The criticisms of AI are a healthy part of understanding what's real and what's hype in all things AI. In our Being Guided four stages of work illustrated here, you will see that we placed Software Engineering as an iterative reinforcement of Vibe Coding.

With Vibe Coding we are talking about an emphasis of what feels right to a subject matter expert, to produce outputs that match the desired aesthetic or social expectations, rather than being grounded in rigorous engineering or scientific principles.

Therefore, Vibe Coding may be accused of being an approach that often prioritises surface-level impressiveness or alignment with current trends over transparency, reproducibility, or genuine understanding of the underlying systems.

However, as a non-programmer I was a great believer in what Salesforce pioneered twenty years ago, sometimes referred to by IT people as 'declarative programming'. Salesforce was a pioneer in popularising declarative programming for business users, especially in the context of building Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications on its cloud platform.

In Salesforce’s terminology, declarative programming refers to the ability to create, configure, and customise applications using visual tools—such as point-and-click interfaces, wizards, and drag-and-drop builders—rather than writing traditional code (Salesforce, 20201⁷).

Vibe Coding must preserve the power of declarative programming and provide a balance of both the inherent nature of 'vibe' (what feels right) with being fully grounded in rigorous Software Engineering principles and practices. This leads to the idea of 'humans-in-the-loop' alongside AI, and the concept of Pair Programming expanded upon below.

Nicholas G. Carr’s seminal 2003 Harvard Business Review article, IT Doesn’t Matter argued that information technology (IT) was becoming a commodity—akin to electricity or railroads—rather than a source of sustained competitive advantage (Carr, 2003²⁰).

Carr contended that as IT infrastructure became more standardised, accessible, and affordable, its strategic value diminished. He urged organisations to manage IT as a utility: focus on cost control, risk mitigation, and reliability, rather than seeking differentiation through proprietary IT.

Fast forward from 2003 to today and the rise of Vibe Coding allows business users and 'citizen developers' to create sophisticated applications and workflows without traditional programming skills (Bender & Hanna, 2024¹⁶).

Production-class apps must always meet stringent requirements for security, scalability, and maintainability. These apps often handle sensitive data, integrate with complex systems, and serve large user bases - all of which demand a level of precision and reliability, including:

Security Risks: AI-generated code must avoid introducing vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting, due to a lack of context (Perry et al., 2022⁷).

Scalability Challenges: AI tools optimised for performance and anticipating need for horizontal scaling, avoiding bottlenecks as user demand grows (Bass et al., 2019²).

Business Logic Complexity: AI fully grasping the business rules or compliance requirements, which are often context-specific, require human judgment (Holstein et al., 2019⁵).

Maintenance and Debugging: AI-generated code must be easy to maintain, including sufficient modularity and docs that human developers prioritise (Lwakatare et al., 2020⁶).

Working in pairs.

Our approach to Vibe Coding is Pair Programming: where a non-programmer (known as Vibe Coder) collaborates with one or more Software Developers to co-create a CRM app. Guided by AI, the Vibe Coder contributes domain expertise and high-level requirements, whilst the Software Developer ensures technical rigour.

Pair Programming leverages the strengths of both parties: the Vibe Coder’s understanding of the problem space and the Software Developer’s ability to implement scalable, secure solutions (Holstein et al., 2019⁵).

Over time, the ratio of Vibe Coders to Software Developers will change. The productivity gains from AI-powered Vibe Coding will become more measurable. This will mean more Vibe Coders, less Software Developers.

Vibe Coding tech, so far.

Any post created on the state of play in Vibe Coding technologies is inherently going to look out of date very quickly. As most IT industry people know, the rate of AI innovation and the creation of AI startups is superfast. Today, Vibe Coding has many market entrants.

My own choice of Vibe Coding technology options has been greatly influenced by paying equal attention to culture as to features. With Pair Programming, real world Vibe Coding app innovation always requires 'humans in the loop', (Knight. W. 2025¹²).

At the time of writing (or updating) this Journal post, I have been building CRM Pro as a CRM App Framework with Vibe Coding technologies: such as Base44¹³ and Lovable¹⁴. I have provided a screenshot below of my Being Guided Vibe Coding build process with this challengers.

I will be publishing much more about the detail of these Vibe Coding experiences, as I apply them to real world CRM Pro engagements. As you can see in the screenshots below, these tools are remarkably similar in user experience: natural langaguage prompts on the left and app preview on the right.

In this ever-changing landscape, Base44 has been acquired by Wix. This was a remarkable, albeit short life for a startup: acquired for $80million where the founder built the business in 6 months, generating $189k profit in month 6, with 250,000 users, and growing.

Over time, distinctive differences between these Vibe Coding technologies, new market entrants and acquisitions will all have a profound impact on this approach to No-Code digital innovation.

Vibe Coding is still emerging as a class of AI technology. In addition to No-Code tools there are Full-Code technologies such as Claude Code¹⁵ from Anthropic, to accelerate Software Developer productivity. This may be better described as 'Deep Coding'.

In Deep Coding mode, Software Developers can also use technologies such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex and Abacus AI ChatLLM. Over time, we may see convergence between Vibe Coding and Deep Coding technologies.

Vibe Coding takes advantage of best-in-class Large Language Models (Anthropic Claude Sionnet 4, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, ChatGPT4, etc.). Vibe Coders can run natural langage prompts across multiple Large Language Models, powering tools, such as Base44 and Lovable.

Design Thinking⁸ and Value Engineering⁹ underpin Vibe Coding in our work at Being Guided. Design Thinking maximises stakeholder engagement by generating empathy and trust. Value Engineering builds robust business cases using ROI Models to defend value and quantify costs.

Consider a scenario where a knowledge-intensive services company needs a custom CRM app to manage client portfolios. A Vibe Coder describes the app’s requirements in natural language, and AI generates the code. Then a Software Developer refines the code.

At Being Guided our approach is to use collaborative methods, where Vibe Coders and Software Developers work together, guided by a Large Language Model (LLM) powering the Vibe Coding options emerging.

A paired Software Developer then refines this platform code, ensuring it meets best practices, security standards and integrates with existing business logic. It's an iterative, safe journey from first generation CRM, such as Salesforce, to next generation Vibe Coded SaaS apps.

Let's remember the motivations for change: faster, simpler and cheaper.

Faster. Vibe Coding is inherently many times faster in the design, development and delivery phases of Web apps when compared to customising Salesforce or other earlier generation Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps. It's days and hours versus months and weeks.

Simpler. At Being Guided we apply Fierce Reduction: the practice of simplifying all business processes, tasks and information systems by removing redundant or non-essential elements before considering Vibe Coding for next generation app development with AI.

Cheaper. With Salesforce Sales Cloud the annual subscription fees for licences is £120 per user per month for the Enterprise Edition. Added to this are professional services fees, often many times the annual subscription fees. With AI-powered CRM Pro apps, tailored to you exact needs, the costs are a fraction of Salesforce licences. The ROI Model is compelling: extend or replace.

Base 44 Vibe Coding. CRM pro App.

Lovable Vibe Coding. CRM Pro app.

Summary. Vibe Coding

At Being Guided we bring four things together in pursuit of improving the high-value, high-touch sell: Design Thinking⁸, Value Engineering⁹, Vibe Coding¹ and AI Sales Coaching²¹. The common thread in all of this is design.

Vibe Coding is the way to introduce non-programmers into the Build process for next generation apps and digitisation of paper-based processes. The Vibe Coder is a subject matter expert who, today still needs to guidance of the Software Developer to create apps that work.

Today, at Being Guided, we are delivering No-Code First innovations on Salesforce Lightning Platform, where native apps are created using Declarative Programming techniques and third-party tools to generate Lightning Web Component (LWC) modules and apps.

Over time, we will introduce Vibe Coding with tehnologies such as Base44 and Lovable that extend Salesforce Lightning Platform apps as a System of Record (SOR). The rate of adoption here will depend upon the stability, scalability and security of these new technologies.

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