Adam Keys is Thinking

Vibe coding is generating code with an LLM (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.) and just going for it. No review, no tests, just prompt/reload/repeat.

Hopefully, you’re only doing this for prototypes! I’m sure some folks are not. Surely, they don’t read this website.

When working this way, I’m tempted to accept every suggestion from the robot “product” collaborator. Yeah, my humble little idea could use a two-pane navigation interface, lazy update semantics, insightful logging, robust error handling, and keyboard shortcuts! Sure, go ahead and try to implement that thousand word spec you just generated in one shot. Without automated feedback. I’ll wait.

This goes about as well a human trying to implement the entire spec in one epic commit. At best, you get a big ball of illegible mud that looks right but doesn’t quite work. At worst, it’s riddled with syntax errors or misused APIs, aka “hallucinations”.

For better or worse, an LLM can slop out as much code as you are willing to pay for, but the compiler/runtime still has the last laugh.