Prompt now, pray later

You’ve probably heard of “vibe coding”: getting generative AI to write software for you.

It’s having its day in the sun right now. Replit and Cursor, two vibe coding apps, are even running influencer campaigns selling it as the cheat code to your own app, no coding experience required.

It’s the same playbook as crypto and MLM: a slick presentation, pull out the credit card, no guarantee it works out.

For a quick internal too, have at it. Automate a spreadsheet, build a dashboard for that meeting room TV. Low stakes, fast iteration, no problem.

Production is another animal. Vibe-coded apps regularly ship with security holes a first-year computer science student would catch. And “I didn’t know” isn’t a defence under GDPR if you’re handling customer data. You can be liable for a breach you can’t even diagnose, let alone fix.

And remember: flat-fee subscriptions currently hiding the real compute cost won’t last. When the pricing catches up to the real cost of running these models, your “free” internal one might not be so free anymore. Don’t base your business on it.

So, vibe code to your heart's content for the stuff nobody else will ever see. The minute it touches a customer or their data, you need a human in the loop who can read the output, not just prompt for it.

Colin