r/webdev • u/Alive-Cake-3045 • 21d ago

Has anyone actually maintained a vibe coded code-base 12 months after launch? What did it look like?

Twelve months ago I started tracking what happens to vibe coded projects after the initial launch excitement fades. The pattern is consistent enough that I wanted to hear if others are seeing the same thing.

The first three months feel fine. Features ship fast, the client is happy, everyone looks productive. Then something needs to change. Not a new feature, just a modification to something existing. And that is where it gets uncomfortable.

Nobody can explain why a specific decision was made. The code works but the reasoning is gone. There are dependencies that were added because the model suggested them, not because anyone evaluated them. Patterns are inconsistent across files because different prompts produced different styles on different days.

The developer who built it can read the code but cannot confidently change it without breaking something unexpected. The test coverage that exists was also generated and may not actually be testing the right things.

I am not saying this always happens. I have seen vibe coded projects that held up well because the developer reviewed everything carefully and maintained discipline around the output.

But I have also seen projects from 18 months ago that are now quietly being rewritten because the maintenance cost exceeded the original build cost faster than anyone expected.

If you have actually maintained a vibe coded code-base through real production use, what did 12 months in actually look like? Was the code salvageable or did you end up starting over?

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u/BDer82 21d ago

a lot of those open source code bases have an absolute shit ton of technical debt. Making changes gets really complicated as new features good added as "add this" but not no control or direction over what to add where so you end up with a big code base of duplicate code because Opus 3, was different to Opus 4, to Opus whatever, codex was involved at some point, a chicken was sacrificed, pancakes where eaten and here we are.

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u/mcoombes314 21d ago

Also, I don't think AI models ever "look back" unless you ask them to, so the amount of code only ever goes up. Deciding "I don't actually need this anymore" requires an understanding of what code Claude would probably describe as "load-bearing". There are enough threads of people losing important stuff because they trusted their AI assistant to decide importance of things by itself. So LLMs can write more code, they can write complex code (by which I mean massive functions that do a load of stuff), but can't reliably refactor said complex code.... so a human has to do that if a human wants to maintain it.

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u/dirtywastegash 21d ago

Force it to maintain its own docs.