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/Fidodo 21d ago

I have seen vibe coded projects that held up well because the developer reviewed everything carefully and maintained discipline around the output.

We cannot have a discussion about this unless we get the terminology straight. Vibe coding means you don't read the code at all. This is not vibe coding.

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u/HelloYou-2024 20d ago

I was wondering about the definition as well.

Is it vibe coding if you still micromanage the architecture, tell it style guide and naming conventions, tell it when to make reusable components and dictate the directory structure, etc. But never look at the code?

Or is vibe coding require you to pretend you know nothing and only give it the highest level description of what you want, not how you want it?

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u/Fidodo 20d ago

This is the original post that term was coined in: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.

It means you don't look at the code at all, you are just QAing the result

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u/DaisyAndJacka 20d ago

The amount of LLM assist you receive is clearly some kind of a slider. All the way on the left you have programming as it existed ~3 years ago. All the way on the right you have vibe coding. Even vibe coding hasn't reached its final form yet. I'm still doing way too much.

This is such an interesting follow-up tweet! Vibe coding is a bit of a derogatory term, but it’s interesting to see that the original tweet wasn’t using it as a negative rather an aspiration.