63% of people vibecoding right now aren't developers. Designers, marketers, founders, creators. They figured out they can build things. Real things. Working things.

But they keep hitting a ceiling. And here's the thing, more prompting doesn't break through it.

I've seen this pattern so many times now. Someone gets good at prompting. Ships a tool. Then another. Then like ten more. But they can't seem to get past the hobbyist phase. They're making things work, but they're not building something that scales.

The ceiling isn't technical. It's organizational.

They're treating AI like a tool when the people actually winning are treating it like a team. And teams need structure, you know, roles, accountability, quality gates, vision.

The Identity Shift

So let me introduce you to the Orchestrator.

This isn't a downgrade from "real builder." It's the higher-leverage role. Think about what a PM or Product Owner actually does. They don't write code. They define what success looks like and make sure the team delivers it. That's the job now.

Here's the progression I see:

Hobbyist: "I prompted and something worked." Building 10+ tools, experimenting, seeing what sticks.

Builder: Actually putting together infrastructure. Waitlists. Taking steps to validate ideas, getting interest.

Orchestrator: Has a full team ready to spin up a project, manage departments, and launch on the right foot. Comes to the table with frameworks.

The key difference? Orchestrators don't figure it out as they go. They arrive with the system already in place.

If you're feeling like you're "cheating" by not coding, let me reframe that.

You're not cheating if you're serving.

The cowboys didn't exist before the Wild West. You can't compare yourself to people who built careers in a different era. They started from different ground. You're using the tools of this era. The only measure that matters: are you creating something that genuinely benefits the people you're trying to serve?

If yes, there's no cheating involved.

The AI Org Chart

High-level vision isn't prompting. It's a PRD, a brainstorm, a game plan. A thought-out process of how everything needs to be mapped out.

You don't want to start and let AI guide you in this environment. A high performer, a high orchestrator, comes into this with a strong plan where AI fills the time-wasting gaps. AI does the basic research to fill the vision, to deny the vision, to support, to counter. That's what high vision is.

I think about this like the founder trifecta I've started framing. Gino Wickman's Rocket Fuel focuses on the Visionary and the Integrator. I'd add a third: Relationship. But more on that later.

Here's the hierarchy I use:

Tier 1: You (The Visionary)

Sets direction, owns the outcome. Defines what "done" looks like. Holds the taste and standards.

Tier 2: Department Heads (4 Sub-Agents)

• CTO: Tech and engineering decisions
• COO: Operations and execution
• CMO: Go-to-market, sales, relationships
• CPO: Product direction and roadmap

These are decision-makers at their level. They translate your vision into plans.

Tier 3: Workers

• Planners turn vision into frameworks
• Validators enforce your quality standards
• Integrators connect the pieces
• Executors perform the tasks

Everything rolls up to the sprint or mission. You're running a real company structure, just without the payroll.

Standards Are Your Moat

Here's what separates orchestrators from everyone else: standards.

Everyone has access to the same AI. The difference is what you accept as "done."

There's a lot of people who can execute, but their standards are so low because they don't know what high quality is. Or they're just lazy. Having standards, and having validators to enforce your standards, is so key in every project you do to actually get the level of result you want.

Validators are enforcers for your quality standards. They take your vision, the planner turns it into frameworks, and you provide those frameworks to your validators. These frameworks are your quality standards, the minimum you accept. If you let them set it themselves, it gets lazy. So it keeps to your standards.

But where do standards come from?

I practice something I call "having a thousand years of experience."

You need to pay attention to experts. Research experts. Talk to experts. Be in the same room. Understand the shortcuts and habits they've built up over years and years of time. If you can absorb those, if you can adapt those, it saves you decades while getting the same quality standard of output.

AI can bridge that gap for you in terms of speed and execution. If you take their standards, if you get an understanding of how they think and how they work, that will lead you there.

What is industry best practice? What is expert best practice? Being able to see that and connect the dots is really going to put you ahead.

The Rhythm: Agile at AI Speed

Because AI works in minutes rather than days, you need to adjust your cadence. Stand-ups, meetings, check-ins, these happen session-to-session now, not day-to-day.

And you need to get really, really good at reporting.

If you know proper reporting, if you know how to frame it, if you know how to get good detail and data out of your AI, it will in turn allow you to have really good data to put back in with your modifications and insights. You can take out quality data and put it back in only if you know how to get good executable data out of your AI.

When to step in: When the vision doesn't match the execution. That's basically having your department head or the planner beneath them misalign with your direction. You need a reporting loop. Before big executions and final sign-offs, it comes back up to you.

When there's a mismatch: Work backwards. Reverse engineer. Knowing how AI thinks is where this gets important. AI takes everything super literally. So where could your logic have gone wrong? That's the vision level. Then: where did it technically go wrong? That's the execution level.

Fix the logic first, then the technical.

Reporting Formats That Actually Work

The best ones come from Fortune 500 companies and elite consulting firms. Three I'd recommend:

Amazon 6-Pager (adapted for AI sessions) Introduction (what we're working on), Goals (what success looks like), State of Work (where we are now), Blockers (what's in the way), Lessons Learned (what we discovered this session), Next Priorities (what happens next).

McKinsey SCQA Framework Situation (context, indisputable facts), Complication (the problem or gap), Question (what needs to be decided), Answer (recommendation).

Pyramid Principle Lead with the conclusion or recommendation. Then supporting arguments. Then evidence and data.

Jeff Bezos put it well: "PowerPoint is a sales tool. Internally, the last thing you want to do is sell. You're truth-seeking."

That's what reporting is. Truth-seeking. Get the real status so you can make the right call.

The Relationship Edge

Here's the third role I mentioned. And I would say it might be the most important for scale.

If you want a 7-figure, 8-figure, 9-figure, 10-figure business, you have to be cultivating relationships.

It's a bit of an exploratory role because it's so hyper important nowadays to be cultivating relationships, social media, presence. It kind of falls under CMO, but it's really about engaging and managing relationships in the X/Twitter environment, the LinkedIn environment. Being able to touch on these is so key to reach the extent you want your business to go.

If you use AI to maintain and continue opportunities through touch-ins or engagement, keep it light. Just engage. Make sure you're on their mind. Put out content. You need a brand. The relationship role ties into self-branding. Having AI help you stay on top of that is really going to push the needle.

But here's the line I don't cross:

I would not let AI handle a business conversation.

AI can handle touch-ins. Maybe tips and advice if it's prompted correctly. Light engagement on comments and replies.

But when it really comes down to having those conversations, setting up anything in-person or Zoom meetings, I would not let AI touch it.

The high-stakes moments need authenticity. AI maintains presence at scale. You convert the relationships.

The First Step

If you're reading this and you're stuck at hobbyist or builder, here's what I'd tell you to do this week:

Take inventory of what has been your biggest blocker for your business. Then use AI to help you research what high-performing companies have built as a framework to tackle that same problem.

Because it is very rare, especially nowadays, that you're running into a unique problem. It is very rare to have an original thought with all the technology in the world. There is too much data to think that all of your experiences are original.

Inspiration is one of the biggest power moves in this industry right now. Don't reinvent. Research. Find the framework. Adapt it to your context. Move.

The Vision

Here's what this playbook gives you: a jetpack on your efforts.

If you have a product that serves, people to serve, and an orchestrated system, your success is inevitable.

What it comes down to now are the variables that are you. Your discipline, your grit, your adaptability. That's what takes you to your billion-dollar business.

AI gives you speed. Frameworks give you direction.

The Orchestrator has both.