You Can't Vibe Code Your Way to Production

And if you try, be ready for the fallout.

There's something intoxicating about vibe coding. You describe what you want, the AI builds it, and suddenly you have a working application. No struggling through documentation. No Stack Overflow rabbit holes. Just ideas becoming reality at the speed of conversation.

It feels like magic. And honestly? It kind of is.

But here's the uncomfortable truth that nobody wants to talk about: vibe coding will get you to a demo. It won't get you to production.

The Illusion of "It Works"

When you vibe code an application, you see the interface. You click buttons. Things happen. Data appears. It works.

But do you know what's actually happening underneath?

How is user data being stored?
Who can access what?
Are your API keys exposed?
Is your database open to the internet?
Can someone enumerate all your users with a simple script?

"It works" and "it's production-ready" are separated by a canyon of critical details. And that canyon is filled with security vulnerabilities, architectural nightmares, and technical debt that will haunt you for years.

The Problem With Not Knowing What You Built

Here's the core issue with pure vibe coding: you don't know what you have.

You asked for a user authentication system. The AI gave you one. But:

Is it hashing passwords correctly, or at all?
Are sessions being managed securely?
Can users access other users' data by changing an ID in the URL?
Is there rate limiting on login attempts?
Are you storing sensitive data in local storage where JavaScript can access it?

You don't know. Because you didn't build it—you requested it. And there's a massive difference between those two things.

When you build something yourself, you understand every decision. When you vibe code it, you understand the outcome but not the implementation. And implementation is where security lives.

AI Only Checks What It's Told to Check

This is the part people miss entirely.

AI is incredibly capable. It can write secure code. It can implement best practices. It can even audit for vulnerabilities.

But it can only do what it's instructed to do.

If you don't tell it to check for SQL injection, it might not check. If you don't ask about CORS policies, it won't mention them. If you don't specify that you need proper authentication flows, it might give you something that technically works but is fundamentally insecure.

Sure, you can build elaborate systems—automated testing pipelines, security scanning tools, comprehensive checklists. But here's the catch: you have to know what to put on the checklist.

If you don't know that exposed cloud bucket permissions are a risk, you won't think to check for them. If you don't understand that API rate limiting matters, you won't ask for it. If you've never heard of IDOR vulnerabilities, you won't test for them.

The AI isn't going to spontaneously decide to audit your entire security posture. It responds to what you ask. And you can't ask about things you don't know exist.

The Checklist You Don't Know You Need

Let me give you a taste of what production-ready actually requires:

Authentication & Authorization

Are passwords hashed with a modern algorithm (bcrypt, Argon2)?
Is there proper session management?
Do you have role-based access control?
Can users only access their own data?
Is there protection against brute force attacks?

Data Security

Is sensitive data encrypted at rest?
Is data encrypted in transit (TLS everywhere)?
Are you storing anything you shouldn't be?
What's your data retention policy?
Are backups encrypted and access-controlled?

API Security

Are all endpoints authenticated?
Is there rate limiting?
Are you validating and sanitizing all inputs?
Are API keys and secrets properly secured?
Is there protection against common attacks (SQL injection, XSS, CSRF)?

Infrastructure & Cloud

What are the permissions on your cloud storage buckets?
Is your database publicly accessible?
Are your environment variables actually secret?
What ports are exposed?
Who has access to your production environment?

Architecture

Can your system handle the load you're expecting?
What happens when a service goes down?
Do you have logging and monitoring?
Can you actually debug production issues?
Is there a disaster recovery plan?

This isn't even comprehensive. It's just a starting point. And if you vibe coded your entire application, how many of these questions can you actually answer?

The Third-Party Reality Check

Here's something I believe strongly: every application needs a third-party review before it touches real users.

Not because you're bad at your job. Not because AI tools are unreliable. But because we all have blind spots.

When you're deep in building something, you develop assumptions. You take shortcuts that seem reasonable. You overlook things because you've been staring at the same code for too long.

A fresh set of eyes—especially one specifically looking for security issues—will find things you missed. They'll ask questions you didn't think to ask. They'll probe edges you didn't know existed.

This isn't optional for production applications. It's a requirement. The cost of a security audit is nothing compared to the cost of a data breach.

Vibe Coding Is a Tool, Not a Strategy

Let me be clear: I'm not anti-vibe coding. It's an incredible accelerator. It lowers barriers. It lets people build things they never could before.

But it's a tool for starting, not for finishing.

Use vibe coding to:

Prototype ideas quickly
Generate boilerplate you understand
Explore approaches before committing
Learn how things work by seeing them built

Don't use vibe coding to:

Build production systems you don't understand
Skip the security fundamentals
Avoid learning the underlying technology
Replace architectural thinking

The developers who will thrive in this new era aren't the ones who can prompt the best. They're the ones who can prompt well and understand deeply. They use AI to move faster, but they still know exactly what's happening at every layer of the stack.

The Real Cost of Getting It Wrong

Technical debt from vibe coding isn't like normal technical debt. It's worse.

With normal technical debt, you at least understand what you owe. You made conscious decisions to cut corners, and you know where those corners are.

With vibe-coded technical debt, you don't even know what you don't know. The problems are hidden. They're in architectural decisions you didn't consciously make. They're in security configurations you never reviewed. They're in code patterns you can't recognize as problematic because you don't know what the patterns should be.

This kind of debt doesn't just slow you down. It blows up. One security incident. One scaling crisis. One audit failure. And suddenly you're not iterating on your product—you're rebuilding it from scratch with the pressure of existing users and compromised data.

The Path Forward

If you've been vibe coding your way through development, here's my honest advice:

Stop and learn. Before your application touches real users with real data, you need to understand what you've built. Not at an expert level—but enough to know the questions to ask and the risks to check.

Get help. Bring in someone who knows security. Have them review your architecture, your code, your infrastructure. Pay for a proper audit. It's cheaper than a breach.

Build the checklist. Create a comprehensive list of everything that needs to be verified before production. Authentication. Authorization. Data handling. API security. Infrastructure configuration. Then actually verify each item.

Respect the complexity. Building software that handles real users and real data is genuinely hard. AI makes it faster, but it doesn't make it simple. The complexity is still there—it's just hidden. And hidden complexity is the most dangerous kind.

The Bottom Line

Vibe coding is revolutionary. It's democratizing software development. It's enabling things that weren't possible before.

But it's not a shortcut to production. It's a shortcut to prototypes.

The gap between a working demo and a production application isn't about features. It's about understanding. It's about security. It's about architecture. It's about all the invisible things that separate toys from tools.

You can vibe code your way to impressive demos. You can't vibe code your way to applications you can trust with real users and real data.

Learn the fundamentals. Understand what you're building. Get your work reviewed. Then, and only then, are you ready for production.

The fallout from skipping these steps isn't a bug to fix later. It's a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Building something and want a professional review before going to production? Let's talk about a security audit before your users pay the price for hidden vulnerabilities.