Vibe writing maxims
Shreyas Prakash
Some vibe-writing maxims:
- While writing, have two windows open: one for the writing, and the other one for ChatGPT. Previously he used to consult ChatGPT a couple of times for internet research, but now the role has transitioned to be a more conversational thought partner, helping you riff-raff on the idea for the essay. (Let’s say you’re writing an essay about tarrifs, and you want to understand what the general consensus is, so that you could provide an unique insight that can counter-position to the general consensus. It’s particularly helpful to provide this). Deep Research is also effective in productizing the ‘secondary research’ part of any essay where you have to crawl all over the internet to then derive the analysis from (Deep Research is basically a Mckinsey level research analyst at your doorstep helping you with this part of the process)
- It also helps with alternative word seeking. Let’s say we want to find an alternate word to “outrage”, and you can give some references to ground them so that it generates a close cousin you’re expecting. This can be done on a word level, sentence level, or even on a paragraph level.
- AI can help in fleshing out the essay with a meta-analysis, your first pass roughest-rough draft (even half-way through), you could probe ChatGPT to analyse if you’re getting to the core of the argument quickly? is it building momentum? is it a good opening, or there could be some alternate openings, closings?
- In essays which involve more argument analysis, I also apply some of these questions inspired by Lex Fridman’s interview style. For eg:
| Question | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Can you steelman the case for …? | Elicit strongest argument for.. |
| Can you strawman the case for..? | Address counterarguments for.. |
| Can we break this down into first principles… | Analyse from basic axioms |
| What happens if we take this to the extremes.. | Test robustness when it comes to the edge cases |
- The more we use AI-assisted writing, there is a big risk of the writing sounding like AI. The line needs to be tread carefully where you use AI for asking good questions, identify flaws, improve/edit content, not to actually put words in your mouth. I also use this quite extensively to remove the filler words such as dwelve, em-dashes and the usual AI-generated copypasta: `Identify and remove any generic or overused phrases that make the writing sound artificial. Replace common AI phrases with more original, specific language.
End of post
Subscribe to get future posts via email (or grab the RSS feed). 2-3 ideas every month across design and tech
2026
2025
- Legible and illegible tasks in organisations
- L2 Fat marker sketches
- Writing as moats for humans
- Beauty of second degree probes
- Read raw transcripts
- Boundary objects as the new prototypes
- One way door decisions
- Finished softwares should exist
- Essay Quality Ranker
- Export LLM conversations as snippets
- Flipping questions on its head
- Vibe writing maxims
- How I blog with Obsidian, Cloudflare, AstroJS, Github
- How I build greenfield apps with AI-assisted coding
- We have been scammed by the Gaussian distribution club
- Classify incentive problems into stag hunts, and prisoners dilemmas
- I was wrong about optimal stopping
- Thinking like a ship
- Hyperpersonalised N=1 learning
- New mediums for humans to complement superintelligence
- Maxims for AI assisted coding
- Personal Website Starter Kit
- Virtual bookshelves
- It's computational everything
- Public gardens, secret routes
- Git way of learning to code
- Kaomoji generator
- Style Transfer in AI writing
- Copy, Paste and Cite
- Understanding codebases without using code
- Vibe coding with Cursor
- Virtuoso Guide for Personal Memory Systems
- Writing in Future Past
- Publish Originally, Syndicate Elsewhere
- Poetic License of Design
- Idea in the shower, testing before breakfast
- Technology and regulation have a dance of ice and fire
- How I ship "stuff"
- Weekly TODO List on CLI
- Writing is thinking
- Song of Shapes, Words and Paths
- How do we absorb ideas better?
2024
- Read writers who operate
- Brew your ideas lazily
- Vibes
- Trees, Branches, Twigs and Leaves — Mental Models for Writing
- Compound Interest of Private Notes
- Conceptual Compression for LLMs
- Meta-analysis for contradictory research findings
- Beauty of Zettels
- Proof of work
- Gauging previous work of new joinees to the team
- Task management for product managers
- Stitching React and Rails together
- Exploring "smart connections" for note taking
- Deploying Home Cooked Apps with Rails
- Self Marketing
- Repetitive Copyprompting
- Questions to ask every decade
- Balancing work, time and focus
- Hyperlinks are like cashew nuts
- Brand treatments, Design Systems, Vibes
- How to spot human writing on the internet?
- Can a thought be an algorithm?
- Opportunity Harvesting
- How does AI affect UI?
- Everything is a prioritisation problem
- Now
- How I do product roasts
- The Modern Startup Stack
- In-person vision transmission
- How might we help children invent for social good?
- The meeting before the meeting
- Design that's so bad it's actually good
- Breaking the fourth wall of an interview
- Obsessing over personal websites
- Convert v0.dev React to Rails ViewComponents
- English is the hot new programming language
- Better way to think about conflicts
- The role of taste in building products
- World's most ancient public health problem
- Dear enterprises, we're tired of your subscriptions
- Products need not be user centered
- Pluginisation of Modern Software
- Let's make every work 'strategic'
- Making Nielsen's heuristics more digestible
- Startups are a fertile ground for risk taking
- Insights are not just a salad of facts
- Minimum Lovable Product
2023
- Methods are lifejackets not straight jackets
- How to arrive at on-brand colours?
- Minto principle for writing memos
- Importance of Why
- Quality Ideas Trump Execution
- How to hire a personal doctor
- Why I prefer indie softwares
- Use code only if no code fails
- Personal Observation Techniques
- Design is a confusing word
- A Primer to Service Design Blueprints
- Rapid Journey Prototyping
- Directory Structure Visualizer
- AI git commits
- Do's and Don'ts of User Research
- Design Manifesto
- Complex project management for product
2022
2020
- Future of Ageing with Mehdi Yacoubi
- Future of Equity with Ludovick Peters
- Future of Tacit knowledge with Celeste Volpi
- Future of Mental Health with Kavya Rao
- Future of Rural Innovation with Thabiso Blak Mashaba
- Future of unschooling with Che Vanni
- Future of work with Laetitia Vitaud
- How might we prevent acquired infections in hospitals?