In this Journal post I am focused on the Build process for digital innovation. This is a No-Code First approach to delivering your next generation Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps powered by Salesforce Lightning Platform, faster.

Citizen Developers, empowered.

In this Journal post I am focused on the Build process for digital innovation. No-Code First means creating Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps powered by Salesforce. The specific use case here is health and social care app called Social Care Cloud. However, this applies to any industry.

Read my Journal post Simplify to learn more about how Experimentation with Storyboards and Models enable Citizen Developer innovation. It is this bottom-up approach that makes Insource of information technology a powerful reality. This is based on two things:

• Citizen Developers Empowered. Citizens are motivated to fix the problems that directly affect their lives. In the Social Care Cloud use case this is Discharge Nurses, Social Carers, Patients and Families - not executives - who have the greatest motivation to fix the big bed-blocking problem that, in turn, causes delays to time-critical patient operations.
• No-Code First. Of course, if Citizen Developers are empowered to create SaaS apps that solve compelling problems, then executive managements and IT professionals can create a safe environment for Insourcing to thrive. This is No-Code First: scalable and secure.

Vibe Coding, step-by-step.

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 prompts, where the term 'vibe' comes from "fully giving into the vibes, and forget that the code even exists".

I see Vibe Coding as a set of new but reliable technologies that accelerates the design and development of SaaS apps built on Salesforce Lightning Platform⁵. I describe my current state experience here as the AI Augmentation phase.

AI Augmentation means that there is always humans-in-the-loop in the Build activities with Salesforce. However, what AI can deliver today are tools that allow non-programmers - Citizen Developers - to do much more than before in creating Salesforce-powered digital innovation.

Salesforce and Abacus.ai.

Vibe Coding, in the context of Salesforce, is where technologies such as Abacus.ai² become the AI Agents to guide Citizen Developers to accomplish tasks that were previously only the domain of tech experts. This is also the foundation of the pre-Build step: Optimise.

Abacus.ai DeepAgent provides:

Conversational Code Generation. Users describe what they want in plain English, and DeepAgent generates Salesforce code (Apex, LWC, Flows) or configuration steps.

Real-Time Collaboration. Multiple users can interact with DeepAgent, review code, and iterate on solutions together.

Context Awareness. DeepAgent understands Salesforce metadata (Objects, Fields, Relationships) and tailors its responses to your Salesforce Org Data Schema.

Design Thinking³ and Value Engineering⁴ underpins my 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.

Faster. No-Code development of Salesforce Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps can be reduced in time and costs as days and hours versus months and weeks, if Citizen Developers are close to the problem being solved.

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

Cheaper. Vibe Coding represents significant cost savings when Citizen Developers take over 90% or more of the work traditionally delivered by IT services firms operating with a billable people hours business model.

References

1. Karpathy, A. [@karpathy]. (2025, February 2). There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that code even exists. X. https://x.com/karpathy/status/1753472166197080428
2. Abacus.ai. (2025). Abacus AI platform overview.
   https://abacus.ai/platform
3. The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. (2004) Stanford d.school. https://dschool.stanford.edu/about
4. Miles, L.D. (1947). The Lawrence D. Miles Value Engineering Reference Center Collection.
   https://minds.wiscon.edu/handle/1793/301
5. Stutz, A., & Kolb, R. (2021). Salesforce Lightning Platform Enterprise Architecture (3rd ed.). Packt Publishing.
   [https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Salesforce-Lightning-Platform-Enterprise-Architecture-Third-Edition](https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Salesforce-Lightning-Platform-Enterprise-Architecture-Third-Edition)