Zalt Blog

Is vibe coding bad? Not really. Stopping at the demo is. Here is an honest look at the criticism, why it fails, why people hate it, and how to turn all of it into code that actually ships safely.

Your AI is not underperforming, it is underinformed. A capable model with thin context gives confident, generic, sometimes wrong answers. The same model with rich, accurate context feels like it actually knows your business. Most failed AI pilots are context problems, not model problems.

Will vibe coding replace programmers? No. But it retires the pure code-translator and promotes everyone who moves up into judgment: design, verification, security, ownership. The value didn't disappear, it relocated. Here's the realistic answer.

Picking a tech stack before you vibe code isn't about taste, it's about what your AI agent has actually seen in training. Default to boring and popular, deviate only when your app forces it. The Vibecoder's Handbook method in one article.

Building complex graph runtimes that don’t melt down over time is harder than it looks. “When Graph Runtimes Stay Sane” digs into what actually keeps them stable.

Your AI agent isn't guessing because it's careless, it's guessing because you never wrote down what you actually wanted. The Vibecoder's Handbook's fix: one short spec, five sections, kept in the repo. Here's exactly what to put in it.

Most vibe coders don't distrust their apps because the code is bad. They distrust it because they don't understand it, can't undo it, and were sold a flawless demo as the finish line. Here's the real fix for each cause.

The thing stopping AI from replacing your team is not capability. The models are already good enough for a lot of the work. It is accountability: when the output is wrong, someone has to own it, and software cannot hold that. Here is how I design ownership into AI systems.

Vibe coding gets you a working prototype in days. Production is a different job entirely: real hosting, real error handling, monitoring, backups, and cost caps before real users show up. Here's the honest map of that handoff.

Hiring someone to build an AI agent? The code, prompts, eval sets, and infra configs are all IP. Here's what a clean handover actually includes, and the contract clauses that quietly strip your ownership.