Phase 9: Capstone — Ship a Real Project · 20 min · Any vibe coding tool

Reflection and Next Steps

You shipped a real project. Now reflect on what you learned and plan what's next.

Hiring signal: What changes when you use this: you have a framework for continuous improvement — which means you keep getting better with every project.

What you will learn

Reflect on the 10 habits learned in the course
Identify what you'd do differently next time
Plan projects to build next
Understand the vibe coding mindset: curious, skeptical, iterative
Present your project as part of a portfolio

Your Mission

Reflect on your capstone experience, rate yourself on the 10 habits, and prepare your portfolio piece. Output: reflection.md.

You need: A deployed capstone project (from Lesson 04).

Time: 25 minutes.

Step 1: Review the 10 Habits (5 min)

The beginning, not the end
This course taught you habits, not just tools. The tools will change — Cursor will add features, Lovable will update, new tools will appear. But the habits work with any tool. You're not a Cursor user or a Lovable user — you're a vibe coder with review habits. Those habits transfer to every tool, every project, every language.

Throughout this course, you've built 10 habits:

Predict before reveal — Before reading AI code, predict what it should look like (Phase 4)
Read error messages — Don't panic at red text. Identify type and understand message (Phase 4)
The AI debugging loop — Paste with context, diagnose, fix, verify (Phase 4)
The 3-round rule — Round 4+ of corrections → start fresh (Phase 4)
Write upfront context — Project goal, stack, features, data model, design before prompting (Phase 5)
Use context files — .cursorrules, CLAUDE.md, or equivalent (Phase 5)
Review for red flags — Hardcoded secrets, swallowed errors, disabled security, commented-out auth (Phase 3)
Run checklists — Pre-deployment (10 points) and security (7 points) (Phases 7, 8)
Verify AI claims — If AI says "RLS enabled," check. Trust but verify (Phase 3)
Make the ship/no-ship call — Red lights = no ship. Yellow = caution. Green = ship (Phase 8)

Unlock the full lesson

You've read the first 2 sections. The rest of this lesson covers Step 2: Rate Yourself on Each Habit (5 min), Habit Self-Assessment (1-5 scale), Step 3: Reflect on Your Capstone (10 min), Capstone Reflection, Step 4: Prepare Your Portfolio (5 min), Portfolio, Features, Tech Stack, What I Learned, Step 5: Choose Your Next Project (3 min), Next Project, You're Done — plus a hands-on lab, quiz, and project artifact.

Create a free account to unlock Phase 0 and Phase 1 of every course — no credit card.