Published: Aug 30, 2025 by IotaSpencer
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Introduction
Vibe coding is worrying because it relies on rapid AI generation without human oversight, leading to serious problems with code security, maintenance, and scalability. While fast for prototypes, this approach accrues significant technical debt and produces code that is opaque, brittle, and difficult to manage in production environments.
Code quality and maintenance
Rapid technical debt.
Vibe coding prioritizes immediate results over clean architecture, producing code that may be poorly organized, inefficient, or over-engineered. This creates “AI legacy code” that becomes a nightmare to maintain and scale.
Inconsistent code structure.
Because AI agents lack a comprehensive, high-level view of the project, they often generate code with inconsistent patterns and styles. This makes the codebase harder to reason about and refactor over time.
Debugging is a guessing game.
AI-generated code, with its opaque logic and lack of comments (when not told to document), is incredibly difficult to debug. When bugs appear, developers are often forced into a cycle of regeneration or “prompting their way” out of the problem rather than systematically troubleshooting.
Security vulnerabilities
Inherently insecure code.
AI models are trained on vast datasets of public code, including insecure or outdated patterns. Without explicit security-focused prompts and a thorough human review, AI can introduce known vulnerabilities like SQL injection, insecure authentication, or unsafe memory handling.
False sense of security.
Vibe coding can lead non-technical users to assume the AI is automatically handling security best practices. As a result, critical vulnerabilities may go unnoticed until they are discovered by an audit or exploited by an attacker.
Prompt injection risk.
The process is also vulnerable to “vibe hacking,” where malicious actors craft inputs that manipulate the AI’s code generation process to introduce backdoors or other vulnerabilities.
Developer skill and workflow
Erosion of core skills.
Over-reliance on AI for code generation can prevent junior and new developers from building the fundamental skills needed for deep problem-solving, architectural design, and debugging.
Team collaboration friction.
In a collaborative setting, vibe coding can disrupt development workflows. Different team members using different prompting styles may produce inconsistent code. It also fosters “prompt wars” where developers spend more time refining prompts than coding.
Limited understanding for non-coders.
While vibe coding lowers the barrier to entry for non-technical individuals, it does not replace the critical thinking and system understanding required for robust software. When the generated code breaks, non-coders may hit a wall that the AI alone cannot help them overcome.