Vibe Coding Isn’t a Silver Bullet—But It Might Be Your Secret Weapon

If you’ve been anywhere near tech Twitter or a startup Slack channel lately, you’ve probably heard someone drop the phrase “vibe coding.” 

It’s the latest buzzword sweeping dev culture—a shorthand for using AI tools like Cursor or Lovable to prompt your way through building an app without writing every line of code yourself.

I recently talked about this on the Big Players podcast with Matt Berman (watch it here). We unpacked how vibe coding is changing the game for startups, where it fits into modern dev workflows, and what happens when people lean on it too hard. If you host a podcast and want to dive into topics like AI-assisted development, MVP strategy, or how to scale smart, I’d love to join the conversation.

For founders, vibe coding sounds like a dream: ship faster, cheaper, and without needing a full engineering team from day one. And for developers, it’s a productivity boost that can turn napkin sketches into working prototypes overnight.

But just because it’s hot doesn’t mean it’s foolproof. 

Let’s break down what vibe coding is, why it matters, where it fails, and how to use it well.

What’s vibe coding and why is everyone talking about it?

Vibe coding refers to a development style where engineers (or non-engineers) use large language models (LLMs) to generate working code based on natural language prompts. Tools like Cursor and Lovable make it easy to create entire interfaces, app flows, and backend logic by “vibing” your way through a product build.

The term gained steam after Andrej Karpathy popularized it on social media. But it’s more than a meme. Y Combinator reported that in their latest cohort, startups generated up to 95% of their code using AI.

We’re in a new era of development: fast, cheap, and deceptively simple.

But is it sustainable?

The risks of going too far, too fast

The speed of vibe coding is real; you can go from zero to prototype in days. But that speed masks a dangerous truth: most of the code it generates isn’t built to scale.

When your product is more than a demo—when real users start poking around—companies who exclusively use vibe coding will likely face:

• Tech debt that compounds quickly 
• Debugging nightmares with code you didn’t write and don’t understand 
• Poor architecture making collaboration or handoff to real engineers nearly impossible

Who should be vibe coding and who shouldn’t

Here’s the thing: vibe coding isn’t bad. It’s just often misused.

When junior developers dive into vibe coding, they often lack the foundational understanding of code structure, which can lead to a fragile and disorganized codebase. Similarly, non-technical founders may mistake a functioning prototype for a finished product, unaware of the work needed to make it scalable and secure. Even senior engineers sometimes get frustrated with the inconsistency of AI-generated outputs and abandon it in favor of traditional methods.

But for mid-level developers, vibe coding can be transformative. They know enough to clean up messy AI output, structure it properly, and use AI as a productivity boost rather than a shortcut. This group strikes the right balance—not too green to be reckless, and not too seasoned to dismiss the tools out of hand.

Where does vibe coding belong in your workflow? 

The most powerful use case? Zero to 0.5

At Neutech, we often use vibe coding in the design and prototyping phase. Here’s how:

1. Start with lo-fi Figma screens 
2. Use vibe coding tools to turn those into clickable prototypes 
3. Validate flows, catch UX snags, and play with a real product early 
4. Hand off to the dev team to properly architect and scale

This hybrid approach is faster than building from scratch, but safer than shipping AI-generated spaghetti code to production.

It also gets stakeholders excited early. Instead of showing them a static mockup, you’re putting something real in their hands.

In this economy, smart teams are finding ways to cut costs without compromising long-term viability. This is one of them. (Three more tips for tech companies to weather this volatile economy here!) 

Vibe coding is a tool, not a strategy

Vibe coding isn’t going to replace engineers. But it will reshape how great products get built.

If you’re a founder in MVP mode, here’s the bottom line:

• Use vibe coding for speed, not structure 
• Don’t skip architecture and code review 
• Treat it as a phase, not a replacement for experienced developers

At Neutech, we use AI tools every day—but never in isolation. Our product pods blend design, engineering, and prompt-driven workflows to get you from idea to revenue without digging yourself into a technical hole.

Want to see how vibe coding could fit strategically into your next build? Let’s talk.