Abe Burnett. The book OGDEN, UTAH · UPDATED AUG 2026

THE BOOK  ·  PRE-ORDERS OPEN EARLY SEPTEMBER 2026

You don't need to learn to code.
You need to learn to build.

Vibe coding is the craft of turning ideas into working software by directing AI — no computer science degree required. This is the complete, honest, tool-agnostic guide for people who don't write code for a living, written by a data scientist who builds this way every day.

Get the free setup kit → Pre-order — $12.99 · OPENS EARLY SEPT

PRE-ORDER BUTTON GOES LIVE WHEN AMAZON OPENS IT · JOIN THE LIST AND YOU'LL KNOW THE MINUTE IT DOES

ALSO INSIDE: THE $10/MONTH PATH · THE $200 TIER AND WHEN IT'S WORTH IT · THE CONTEXT SYSTEM NOW OPEN-SOURCED AS FLOWSTATE
Book cover: a man meditating cross-legged with a laptop, inside a white mandala on a blue sky, above the title Vibe Coding for Fun and Profit.
VIBE CODING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
THE NON-DEVELOPER'S GUIDE TO BUILDING REAL SOFTWARE WITH AI
FIRST EDITION · 2026
$12.99
EBOOK · PAPERBACK ALSO AVAILABLE · KINDLE UNLIMITED INCLUDED
15 + EPILOGUE
CHAPTERS, PLUS APPENDICES THAT DOUBLE AS A REFERENCE LIBRARY
4 PATHS
SETUP LADDERS FROM $0 TO $200/MONTH — WITH THE REAL ECONOMICS OF EACH
AI-WRITTEN
DRAFTED WITH AI AGENTS, DISCLOSED UP FRONT — PRACTICING WHAT IT TEACHES
The problemThree walls · no jargon

Sound familiar?

WALL 01

Your ideas are stuck in a notes app.

You know exactly what should exist — the tracker, the tool, the little business. You just can't make it exist. Until now, that gap took a developer or a lottery ticket.

WALL 02

$20 subscriptions are a trap.

The cheap plans run out fast, and nobody explains the real cost ladder — from $10 a month to $200 — before you pay. This book shows the whole ladder, rung by rung, before you subscribe to anything.

WALL 03

The internet yells at you.

Reddit, YouTube, and a thousand newsletters have opinions. Nobody has a plan for you — your budget, your goals, your comfort level. The book's first setup chapter turns the noise into a five-minute decision.

What's inside15 chapters · epilogue · appendices

A working builder's manual

The heavy books on this subject are written for professional engineers. This one starts where you are: no assumed background, no skipped steps, and prices that were actually checked. It is a deliberate funnel — ideas in, working software out — and every chapter ends with something you can run.

Tools change; the book is built for that. It teaches durable principles here and keeps the perishable details — current prices, screenshots, per-tool setup steps — on this page's living setup companion, updated quarterly.

Formats
$12.99 ebook · paperback · Kindle Unlimited included
Pre-orders
Open early September 2026 — Amazon KDP
Written
Drafted with AI agents, edited by hand, disclosed up front
Kept current
abeburnett.com/vibe-coding/setup · checked quarterly
  1. P1The five-minute quiz that matches you to the right setup for your budget — from a genuinely capable $10/month path to the $200 power tier, with the real economics of each and no marketing spin
  2. P2The conversation skills that separate builders from frustrated prompters: how to describe, iterate, review, and direct AI like a professional
  3. P3What actually goes wrong when you build with AI — context loss, fix spirals, memory management — and the modern solutions: context engineering, MCP, orchestration
  4. P4When to use app builders like Lovable, Bolt, and v0 — and when to graduate to real code
  5. P5The professional stack: scaling from "it works on my machine" to systems that survive contact with users
  6. P6Vibe coding at work — internal tools, shared resources, and the office superpowers your colleagues will ask about
  7. P7The bigger picture, engaged honestly: the backlash, security, data centers, and what AI labels mean for everything you create
The pathsOne quiz · four budgets · honest math

Which vibe coder are you?

The book's first setup chapter answers this in five minutes. The ladder below is the short version — every rung works, and the cheapest one is genuinely capable.

FIG. P — THE FOUR SETUP PATHS MONTHLY COST · VERIFIED AUG 2026 FULL LADDER: BOOK, SETUP CHAPTER
PATHMONTHLYWHO IT'S FOR
Budget BuilderPATH A · HERMES + OPENCODE GO
FREE SETUP KIT — THIS PAGE		 $0–20REALISTICALLY $10 Learning, small tools, testing the waters. Everything transfers when you upgrade.
All-RounderPATH B · ONE WORKSPACE ~$60 Most readers. Friction-free building in one place, everything included.
Power UserPATH C · THE PRO TIER $100–200 Products, serious projects, time-is-money. The book says when this is waste.
ExplorerPATH D · START FREE $0TO START Not sure yet. Start cheap, feel it out, upgrade deliberately when a wall appears.
PRICES MOVE — THE CURRENT NUMBERS ALWAYS LIVE AT ABEBURNETT.COM/VIBE-CODING/SETUP, CHECKED QUARTERLY · THE BUDGET BUILDER'S SETUP KIT STARTS YOU ON PATH A FOR FREE
Who and howReaders first · receipts always

Who it's for, how it's different

Who it's for

  • Non-developers with ideas. You'll build your first real thing by Chapter 6.
  • Builders on a budget. The $10 path is real, and the book proves it before asking you to spend more.
  • Anyone who tried AI tools and hit a wall. The tools changed; this is the 2026 way.
  • Developers stuck copy-pasting. It reads fine in the skimming places — the context-engineering chapters are for you too.

How it's different

  • Written for non-developers first, not adapted down from an engineer's book. Vocabulary is explained the first time it appears.
  • Honest about money. Real prices, verified monthly while drafting, with the consumption curve explained before you subscribe to anything.
  • A living book. Durable principles in the text; perishable details — prices, screenshots, setup steps — on the quarterly-updated companion page, free whether you buy the book or not.
  • Built the way it teaches. Drafted with AI agents, disclosed up front, with the reasoning unpacked in the closing chapter. Using the tool honestly is the demo.
The free setup kitPath A · no book required

The Budget Builder's
Setup Kit

Everything you need to run the $10-a-month path, packaged and ready: the walkthrough, the starter prompts, the config templates, and the finish-line checklist. It's the book's cheapest chapter, unpaywalled — take it, build something, and see if the rest of the book is worth $12.99 to you.

THE MANIFEST · 6 FILES · MARKDOWN — WORKS IN ANY TOOL
  • STEP-BY-STEPS.md — the full walkthrough, plain language, ~30 minutesSETUP
  • prompts.md — ten starter prompts that cover 80% of beginner asksPROMPTS
  • templates/AGENTS.md — the project-context file your AI reads automaticallyTEMPLATE
  • templates/claude-context-template.md — the same, for Claude toolsTEMPLATE
  • CHECKLIST.md — "you're set up when…" plus a troubleshooting tableCHECK
  • README.md — the honest math, and where the current prices liveREADME
THE HONEST MATH, AUG 2026:
HERMES (THE AGENT) — $0 · FREE, OPEN SOURCE (MIT)
OPENCODE GO (THE MODELS) — $5 FIRST MONTH, THEN $10/MO
TOTAL — ABOUT $10 A MONTH, LESS IN MONTH ONE

The one catch, stated plainly: this path lives in the terminal. Every command you need is written out for a complete beginner — it looks scary for about an hour, then it's just another tool.

EMAIL → KIT DOUBLE OPT-IN V1.0 · AUG 2026

Get the kit. Free, now.

Your email gets you the download and one note when pre-orders open — nothing else, ever. Joining also puts you first in line to reserve Book 2.

ONE CONFIRMATION EMAIL, THEN BOOK NEWS ONLY · NO SPAM · NO LIST SOLD · UNSUBSCRIBE ANYTIME

Sent. The kit is yours.

Download it below — and check your inbox for one confirmation click. Confirming keeps you on the pre-order list; skipping it keeps the kit anyway.

Download the Setup Kit .ZIP · 6 MARKDOWN FILES · ~30-MINUTE SETUP

PRICES DRIFT — THE CURRENT NUMBERS LIVE AT /VIBE-CODING/SETUP,
AND RE-DELIVER THIS KIT ANYTIME FROM THERE

The seriesTwo books · one of them conditional

The Vibe Coding series

BOOK 1 · THIS BOOK · IN FINAL REVISION

Vibe Coding for Fun and Profit

The Non-Developer's Guide to Building Real Software with AI

The foundations: the quiz, the paths, the conversation skills, the failure modes, and the honest economics from $0 to $200 a month. Pre-orders open early September — $12.99 ebook, paperback, Kindle Unlimited.

Get launch updates →
BOOK 2 · CONDITIONAL · WRITTEN ONLY IF RESERVED

Vibe Coding at the Office

Internal tools, shared resources, and AI superpowers for the workplace

The sequel takes the method to work: the internal tools nobody budgets for, the shared resources everybody reinvents, and the office superpowers your colleagues will ask about. It gets written only if readers reserve it — the list on this page is the commissioning mechanism. Join it, and you're not waiting for Book 2; you're ordering it.

Reserve your spot — same list →
The authorPractitioner, not commentator
Abe Burnett.DATA SCIENTIST · OGDEN, UTAH

Abe Burnett builds AI tooling for a living and for fun. By day he leads AI work at a cybersecurity company; on his own time he ships products built exactly the way this book teaches. He created FlowState, the open-source context framework that started as this book's professional stack — it's free, MIT-licensed, and yours to fork. He writes fiction too, because the barrier between "I have an idea" and "it exists" is lower than it has ever been — for software and for stories.