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AI Coding Books I Recommend to Builders Starting Out
12
items I ship with Claude, Codex, and whatever gets code to production. Books I recommend for builders who want better prompts, cleaner AI workflows, and shipping past the demo stage. Includes my own titles and books I actually hand to people.
Sections
3
My books (Philippe Eveilleau)
Prompting & AI coding references
Daily AI coding tools
My books (Philippe Eveilleau)
Books I wrote under Philippe Eveilleau. Build With AI series: vibe coding for real, then prompt contracts so demos become shipped software.
My book (Philippe Eveilleau). Practical guide from demo to live app. Step-by-step for builders who hit the wall after the first Claude prototype. Same energy as my stacks: ship, do not cosplay engineering theater. Audible + Kindle on Amazon.
Access t...
Vibe Coding, For Real: From Demo to Live App
My book (Philippe Eveilleau). How I turn fuzzy AI chats into prompt contracts: clear inputs, acceptance criteria, and shipping rules so the model stops inventing half-broken features. If you vibe-code then spend a day fixing chaos, start here.
Access...
Prompt Contracts: How I Stopped Vibe Coding and Started Shipping Real Software With AI
Prompting & AI coding references
Guides and books I hand to builders who are not starting from my own titles: official docs, beginner-friendly reads, and IDE context.
Best starting point I know for vibe coding without drowning in jargon. If you can ship a demo but stall before production, this walks the path. I keep it as the default rec for builders who want hands-on, not academic CS.
Access the tool: https://ama...
VIBE CODING FOR ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS: BUILD APPS ...
Clear, practical intro if Claude still feels intimidating. I recommend it to friends who freeze at the empty chat box. Not a theory book: setup, prompts, and habits that actually stick for daily coding.
Access the tool: http://barnesandnoble.com/w/cl...
Claude AI for Complete Beginners: Stop Struggling, Start Succeeding
Official Claude prompt engineering hub. I send people here when they need the source of truth, not a random Twitter thread. Clear patterns for roles, examples, and long-context work.
Access the tool: http://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claud...
Anthropic Prompt Engineering Overview
Solid baseline for GPT-style prompting: structure, tactics, and evaluation. Useful even if your daily driver is Claude. Good checklist before you invent a custom framework.
Access the tool: http://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering
OpenAI Prompt Engineering Guide
Free, broad map of techniques (CoT, ReAct, RAG prompts, etc.). I use it as a reference index when teaching workshops. Not a novel: a toolbox.
Access the tool: http://promptingguide.ai/
The Prompt Engineering Guide (DAIR.AI)
Where AI coding meets the real repo. Pair with books above: prompts are useless if the IDE cannot see your codebase. My weekly stack with Claude.
Access the tool: http://docs.cursor.com/
Cursor Docs: Rules & Context
When the demo works and production does not, this is the book I point at.
Chip Huyen on building applications with foundation models: evals, RAG, latency, the boring parts after the prompt.
Heavier than a vibe-coding paperback. Worth it if you will o...
AI Engineering (Chip Huyen)
A structured prompting book, not a thread dump: patterns you can reuse across models.
I recommend it when someone wants a checklist (roles, few-shot, eval) without inventing a personal religion.
Pairs with the official OpenAI and Anthropic docs, does...
Prompt Engineering for Generative AI
Daily AI coding tools
The CLIs I actually leave open: Claude Code and Codex. Pair the books with these docs or you stay in chat-demo land.
This is the install-and-ship page for Claude Code, not another chat window.
I send builders here when they can prompt in the browser but freeze in a real repo.
Terminal, VS Code, the loop that reads the tree and edits files.
Docs move around; if a li...
Claude Code Overview
Codex is the other daily driver I keep next to Claude Code: a lightweight coding agent in the terminal.
The GitHub repo is the honest entry: install, run, see what it can touch in your tree.
Not a book. It is the tool the books are trying to get you ...
OpenAI Codex (CLI)