Vibe Coding is a Dangerous Fantasy
Last week, X exploded when a “vibe coder” announced his SaaS was under attack.
His business, built entirely with AI assistance and “zero hand-written code,” was experiencing bypassed subscriptions, maxed-out API keys, and database corruption.
His follow-up admission made this notable: “as you know, I’m not technical so this is taking me longer than usual to figure out.”
As someone deeply immersed in the AI code generation space, I’ve been watching this unfold with a mix of sympathy and frustration. Let me be clear — I’m not against AI-assisted development. My own tool aims to improve code generation quality. But there’s a growing and dangerous fantasy that technical knowledge is optional in the new AI-powered world.
After observing many similar (though less public) security disasters, I’ve come to a controversial conclusion: vibe coding isn’t just inefficient — it’s potentially catastrophic.
The Lie of Vibe Coding
Recently, I was working late on a particularly thorny code generation problem when a message from an old SF friend popped up: “Dude, have you seen this? I just launched my side project without writing a single line of code. Just vibe coding!”
He shared his screen with me — a surprisingly polished-looking SaaS product that helped small business with their career path. The UI was clean and the features worked. All built by telling Windsurf what he wanted, occasionally getting frustrated, refining his prompts, and never once understanding the underlying technology.
“That’s great,” I said, genuinely impressed. “What security measures did you implement?”
His blank stare told me everything.
Some time later, his API keys were scraped from client-side code that AI had carelessly left exposed. He had to negotiate with OpenAI to forgive his bill.
Today, his “side project” is offline while he’s trying to learn authentication and security from first principles.
The vibe coder’s dream turns into a nightmare not when the code doesn’t work, but when it works just well enough to be dangerous.
The (Invisible) Complexity Gap
The problem isn’t that AI tools can’t generate secure code — they often can, with the right prompts. The problem is that without understanding what you’re building, you don’t know what you don’t know.
I witnessed this firsthand when helping another friend debug his AI-generated SaaS for teachers. Looking through the code, I discovered:
- No rate limiting on login attempts
- Unsecured API keys
- Admin functions protected only by frontend routes
- DB manipulation from frontend
When I pointed these out, he was genuinely confused. “But it works fine! I’ve been testing it for weeks!”
This is what I’m calling the “invisible complexity gap” of vibe coding — the difference between “it works on my machine” and “it’s secure in production.” The gap exists because modern development tools, especially AI assistants, are extraordinarily good at hiding complexity and making things seem simpler than they are.
AI won’t warn you about the security holes you don’t know to ask about. The perfect circular trap: you can’t secure what you don’t understand, and you don’t understand what AI builds for you
When Vibe Coding Backfires
The reddit thread that went viral last week is filled with experienced developers smugly saying “I told you so” — but that’s not helpful. The reality is that we’re entering an era where more people want to build software, and AI makes that possible in ways it wasn’t before.
But the consequences of security failures are becoming more severe. When that vibe coder’s SaaS got compromised last week, real money was lost. All because someone believed that understanding your tools was optional.
I’m not saying everyone needs to be a security expert or low-level programmer. But there’s a minimum viable knowledge required to responsibly deploy software that handles other people’s data, and AI hasn’t eliminated that requirement — it’s just obscured it.
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What Vibe Coders Can Actually Do
If you’re currently building with AI assistance and recognize yourself in this post, don’t panic. Here’s what you can do right now:
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First, adopt a learning mindset. You don’t need to understand every line of code, but you should understand the architecture — how data flows through your system, where it’s stored, and how it’s protected.
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Second, use AI to educate, not just to implement. When Cursor or ChatGPT or Claude generates code for you, ask it to explain the security implications. Ask it what could go wrong. Ask it what you’re missing.
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Third, implement basic security practices from day one — proper authentication, HTTPS everywhere, environment variables for secrets, and regular backups at minimum. I’m writing another guide on “Security Essentials for Vibe Coders”. Tell me on X if you want to read it.
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This one won’t be possible for many, but, consider bringing in expertise for a security review before launching anything that handles sensitive data. Even a few hours with someone who knows what to look for can save you from disaster. Feel free to email or shoot me a DM on Twitter if you really can’t find someone, if I have the time I’ll try to help.
The Future of Vibe Coding
For every vibe coder reading this who feels defensive or attacked — I get it. You’re not wrong for wanting to build. The traditional path of learning to code was unnecessarily exclusionary. AI has democratized creation in beautiful ways.
But democratizing creation means democratizing responsibility too.
The current wave of vibe coding tools optimize for immediate gratification: making something work now. The next generation needs to optimize for sustainable comprehension: making something work reliably over time.
The most revolutionary aspect of AI coding tools isn’t that they let you skip understanding, it’s that they compress years of learning into months. They don’t replace the journey — they accelerate it.
Let’s embrace that acceleration while rejecting the fantasy that we can outsource understanding entirely. The future belongs to those who use AI as a powerful tool, not a replacement for knowledge.
Not just vibes. Vibes plus knowledge.
That’s how we build things that last.
