One under-discussed shift with vibe coding tools is how they change the nature of flow.

For me, flow shows up as uninterrupted progress and compounding momentum. My attention narrows and my self-awareness fades for a while. It’s one of the most rewarding parts of creative work.

In design, flow comes from immediacy and causal certainty.

You act, you see, you adjust. The feedback loop runs in milliseconds. There’s no interpretive layer between intent and outcome. You duplicate a frame, tweak a control, nudge spacing—and the result is exactly what you expect, every time.

Vibe coding changes that dynamic.

Because you’re generating code, not just pixels, the tool introduces a short delay—often ~15 seconds—while a prompt executes. That pause subtly alters momentum. Even brief waiting shifts the brain out of execution mode and into evaluation mode. I notice myself checking notifications, grabbing coffee, or mentally disengaging in those in-between moments. It requires more self discipline to keep coming back to the work. The beauty of flow state, for me, was that it never really required discipline.

Still, these tools are incredibly powerful. For me, the leverage they provide more than justifies the tradeoff.

I think there's a simple solve for preserving flow state in these tools…

Prompt queues.

Let designers keep expressing intent while the agent works through prior instructions in the background.

Dump ideas as fast as they emerge then review outcomes in batches. Fewer interruptions. Fewer context switches. More continuous direction-setting.