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You're paying for the smartest model to rename a button
Most AI tools let you pick a model, and the wrong pick burns time and money. When a fast, cheap model is plenty, and when a slow, thinking one earns its keep.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 5 min
level: first steps
40 articles · newest first
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Stop prompting patch-on-patch — sometimes a fresh spec beats a fifth fix
The vibe-coder trap is fixing AI code until it's a knot. When a clean rewrite wins over another patch, shown with a real before-and-after and a simple rule for deciding.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 5 min
BuildInteractive
The AI says "I fixed the login." Here's how to check what it actually changed
You don't need to write code to vibe code, but you do need to read it. Three things to look for in a diff — logged secrets, scope creep, silent data changes. Try reading one.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 5 min
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The AI's first answer is a draft, not a verdict — make it attack its own code
The habit that separates people who ship safe apps from people who ship bugs: generate, then ask the model to break what it just wrote. Shown with a real before-and-after.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 5 min
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The words you add to a prompt are the product — watch one go from vague to shippable
The single biggest upgrade to vibe coding is treating a prompt as a spec. See the same request go vague → specific → constrained, with the real code each version produced. Try building one.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 5 min
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One script, 10,000 fake signups overnight: the guardrail most vibe-coded apps ship without
A rate limit caps how many requests someone can fire in a window, so bots, bugs and abuse can't swamp your app or your bill. Why every public endpoint needs one. Tap to watch it hold.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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It worked with ten users. Then a hundred showed up at once.
What happens to a vibe-coded app when it suddenly gets popular, the two ways to handle it, and why "works for ten" isn't "works for ten thousand". Tap to add users.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Don't make the user wait for the slow part — hand it to a queue
Why a vibe-coded app should push slow work to a background job instead of freezing the user, and how queues keep an app responsive when traffic spikes. Tap to load it up.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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You fixed the typo. Visitors still see the old version. Here's why.
A cache keeps a ready-made copy so pages load instantly — most of the web's speed, and the classic bug where old data won't go away. What its lifetime (TTL) controls.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Your app is fast for you and slow for everyone else — the reason is geography
Latency is the wait between a request and its answer, and distance is the biggest cause. Why far-away users feel the lag, and the one thing that fixes most of it. Tap the ladder.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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Your app broke and you have no idea why. It left you a note.
When a vibe-coded app suddenly fails, the error log is the first place to look. How to read one, and why "it just broke" almost never means what it says.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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Every photo, row and document your app saves is one thing: a named box of bytes
What a file actually is, why its type matters, and how it differs from memory that forgets the instant the power goes off.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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The chip reading every instruction, billions of times a second
The CPU does the actual work while you vibe code. The tiny fetch-decode-execute loop it runs, how it differs from a GPU, and why it's where speed and cost come from.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Your app got busy and crashed — it ran out of desk space
RAM is the desk your computer works on: fast, and wiped the moment the power's off. Why a busy app runs out, how it differs from storage, and how it relates to a GPU's VRAM. Tap to see it fill.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
When you vibe code, this is what the AI is actually writing
A program is just an ordered list of exact steps — no magic, no guessing. Tap "run" to step through a tiny one and watch it happen.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
The free speed trick your app already gets — and exactly where it stops
Distance costs time, so a CDN keeps copies of your site on servers near your users. What can be cached at the edge, and what can't. Tap the ladder to see the difference.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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"The cloud" is someone else's computer, rented by the minute
Not fluffy, not far away — real machines in buildings you rent over the internet and hand back when you're done. The plain-English version, for anyone vibe coding an app.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Free until people show up: what a live app actually costs
Hosting is renting the always-on computer your app runs on — mostly free until real users arrive, then metered where it counts, and AI calls are the surprise line. Try the calculator.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Shipping without the padlock is the mistake — here's the name and the lock
What a domain is, what the HTTPS padlock actually proves, and why that certificate is now free and automatic. Tap through going live.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Before you hit deploy: what that button actually promises the world
On your laptop the app is invisible; deploy moves it to an always-on address anyone can reach, and each step raises the stakes. Tap through the timeline.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
The app knows who you are — that's not the same as what you're allowed to touch
Logged in isn't the same as allowed, and the gap between the two is where data leaks. Tap the toggle to see who can read what.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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"Sign in with Google" never gives the app your Google password — here's the trade
You approve on Google's page, the app gets a token and a little profile info, and that's one less password anyone can leak. Why it's often the safer button.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
The wristband that keeps you logged in — and what happens if someone copies it
You don't send your password with every tap. After login the server hands your device a token, and whoever holds it is treated as you. Tap to see it change hands.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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A good app can't email you your own password — that's the feature
If a service can show you your password, it stored it wrong. What a hash is, why "salt" matters, and the one red flag that tells you an app is unsafe.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Logging in doesn't prove you're you — it proves you hold something
What an app actually checks when you log in, and the session it starts the moment you pass. Tap through a real login.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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Run the AI on your own machine, or pay per call? What actually changes
The same kind of model can run on a company's servers or on your own computer. What flips for privacy, cost, speed and model choice — and why your GPU's memory is the ceiling.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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When paying extra for a "thinking" model is worth it — and when it's a waste
Some models write out their working before they answer. What that actually buys you, what the thinking tokens cost, and the kinds of task where switching it on pays off.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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The moment your AI stops writing text and starts doing things
A model on its own can only talk. Tools let it act inside your app; agents let it choose their own next step — and that's where the power and the risk both come from.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
The AI told you to install a package that doesn't exist — that's a real attack
Code models sometimes invent library names, and attackers register those names to wait for you. The research behind it, and the one check that catches it. Try spotting the fake.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Same prompt, different code every time? Here's the dial behind it
The model picks each next word from a shortlist, and "temperature" decides how adventurous that pick is. Turn the dial, watch the output shift — and see why newer models take the choice away.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
When the AI reads "it," how does it know what "it" means?
The idea behind every modern model, shown as a heatmap you can tap: how it decides which of your earlier words matter for the word it's writing next.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Why the AI keeps forgetting what you told it — and how to stop it
The model has no memory of its own. Once a conversation outgrows its window, your earlier decisions quietly fall out. See what drops, what gets summarised, and the habit that keeps what matters in view.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
The AI's working memory has a hard edge, and you keep hitting it
Everything the model can see at once — your prompt, the chat so far, your files, its own reply — sits in one window with a fixed limit. Tap to watch it fill, and see why bigger isn't automatically better.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Your AI bill is counted in tokens, not words — here's what one actually is
The model never sees words; it sees tokens, and they're what your context limit and your bill are measured in. Tap the meter to watch a sentence break apart into them.
Aliteq Team · Sep 26 · 4 min
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AI deleted my database. Can I get it back?
It happened to a Replit user in 2025 and to a Cursor user in 2026. What to check in the first ten minutes, why Lovable's and Replit's undo buttons don't bring data back by default, and the backup habit that does.
Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 6 min
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Supabase: the backend-in-a-box behind so many AI-built apps
A hosted database, login, an automatic API and file storage in one box. What's inside, what the free plan covers, and the one setting it asks you to get right.
Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
A query with no "only" returns everyone's data — here's how that happens
How your app asks a database for exactly the rows it wants, and what a missing filter exposes. Tap to run one and watch the WHERE clause work.
Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
The shape of your data: tables, rows, and the one column that links everything
How a database lays things out, why every column has a type, and the ID that decides whose orders are whose. Tap through a live table.
Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
Where your app actually keeps every sign-up, order and message
It isn't just a spreadsheet. What a database is, why it can find one row among millions, and where Supabase fits. Tap the table to see it work.
Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min
BuildInteractive
The dining room and the kitchen: which half of your app anyone can read
Every part of your app sits on one side of a wall. The frontend runs on the user's device and is readable by anyone; the backend runs on your servers. The rule for what goes where. Tap to see the split.
Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min