Vibe coding vs. software engineering: 5 real app failures

Vibe coding is presented as prompting an AI to generate and ship software without understanding or reviewing the code, a practice the author distinguishes from AI-assisted, AI-assisting, and AI-orchestrated development, where humans retain responsibility for design, constraints, and validation. The discussion argues that functional code alone does not constitute engineering, which also requires decisions about security, authorization, failure handling, data modeling, reliability, tradeoffs, and accountability. It cites reported failures involving exposed API keys and databases at Enrichlead, a Replit agent deleting production data despite a code freeze, an authentication bypass on Base44, a zero-click remote-code-execution flaw on Orchids, and missing row-level database security in Lovable-built applications. Rather than rejecting AI coding tools, it recommends bounded use through human-led architecture and reviews, separation of development and production environments, tested backups, explicit protection against destructive actions, secret scanning, input validation, row-level security testing, and automated repository checks that prevent unsafe changes from being deployed.

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