Vibe-coding is incredible. But here's where most founders hit a wall.
I've been reviewing code from AI tools like Cursor, v0, Lovable, and Bolt. The output is genuinely impressive for prototyping.
But after doing 500+ code reviews over my career, I keep seeing the same patterns when these apps need to go live:
What vibe-coded MVPs typically miss:
- Security basics - No input validation, SQL injection vulnerabilities, exposed API keys in frontend code, missing rate limiting
- Error handling - Works great on the happy path. First unexpected input? Crashes with a cryptic error.
- Authentication gaps - "It has login" ≠ secure auth. Missing session management, no CSRF protection, weak password policies.
- Database sins - No indexes, N+1 queries, no migrations. Fine with 10 users. Falls over at 100.
- No separation of concerns - Business logic mixed with UI. Makes every change a game of Jenga.
The thing is: none of this matters for validation.
If you're testing whether people want your product, vibe-coded is perfect. Ship it. Get feedback.
But there's a predictable moment usually when you get your first 50-100 real users where these issues start compounding. And fixing them in a messy codebase is 3x harder than building right from scratch.
My honest take: Vibe-code your prototype. Validate fast. But budget for a technical cleanup before you scale. It's not starting over it's graduating from prototype to product.
Has anyone else hit this wall? What was the breaking point for you?
Getting my first 100 users with $0: what actually worked
What's the point of AI generated comments?
Why I’m building an AI marketplace instead of another SaaS
Why good products are often hard to understand at first glance
Why can't your target customers always find your product? - Experience sharing
The exact prompt that creates a clear, convincing sales deck
I've finished up 2 of my projects and I'll be posting about one of them soon. It's that I find that while it's good to simply vibe code, I like to make use of specific rules, and setting up unit tests to ensure issues can be caught early as possible.
I keep a diary, and just plan out enhancements. I stick to keeping it MVP when validating, that way, less issues to worry about in the early stages.
My approach to this is using claude to design the project documentation it outlines perfectly about the architecture but still when vibe coding even with antigravity which i mostly use introduces some bugs so I know keep a proper instruction file for agent to read and explain what all the things it needs to follow, as well as creating backup for the feature that is properly working.
I have just done my first vibe coding project. During the journey, I used all Codex, Antigravity and Claude Code. For some reasons, I can mainly use the Codex, but I must say that Codex is only good for doing some simple tasks, once complicated, it will kill itself by creating new bugs. It likes to touch something you didn't ask, then crashed. I personally like Antigravity, however, it's still in beta mode, token is easily used up, and have to wait hours or even days for the token recovered. Anyway, I believe vibe coding is still on the way to the highway, just like I can see the significant improvement of the Codex from 5.1 to 5.2. It's really like what we asked ChatGPT to generate an image 2 years ago comparing to today. Overall, I enjoy to do the coding with these AI agents very much.
The “happy path only” issue is something I’ve seen come up reallly often once an app leaves demo mode.
Everything feels stable when users behave roughly how you imagined during prototyping.
Then real usage introduces weird timing, unexpected inputs, and flows no one tested.
That’s usually when confidence in the codebase starts to wobble a bit.
The gap between “works fine” and “falls over” is smaller than founders expect.
And it shows up right when momentum starts to matter most.
I agree...
During 2025, I worked with 8+ Non-technical Founders, who have vibe-coded their MVP, but, when they start onboarding real users, issues, momory leaks, infinite API calls etc start to happen in the app...
Morever, bcoz they didn't have too much technical expertise, and were going with whatever LLM was explaining to them.. it would often result in chain reaction: One Fix, trigger another issue...
Claude Opus does a decent job here, but it also needs some manual guidance during some tricky/complex fixes involving extensive code context