Vibe Coding — Part 2: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Vibe coding gives teams instant momentum: fast prototypes, quick learning loops, minimal friction. In low stakes areas, that’s the “good” — you move faster, think clearer, and avoid drowning in boilerplate.

But the same ease can mask deeper instability. AI doesn’t understand invariants, performance limits, or which parts of your architecture are load bearing. It produces code that looks correct while quietly drifting away from what keeps systems reliable. That’s the “bad.”

And then there’s the “ugly”: the failures that appear only under stress — a missing retry, a race condition, an unsafe default. Clean code, chaotic outcomes.

What actually works:

• Use vibe coding where uncertainty is cheap.

• Don’t let speed replace architectural discipline.

• Add guardrails so AI accelerates stability, not drift.

AI doesn’t change the rules of software — it only accelerates your path toward or away from them.

Where in your system is vibe coding a boost — and where is it a liability?