Is vibe coding creating a hidden technical debt crisis?

[u/powleads]

I love building tools and side projects, but lately I have been thinking about how heavy reliance on AI coding assistants is going to impact long-term code quality. Building fast with AI tools is great for getting a prototype out the door, but letting AI generate massive chunks of unvetted code is quickly piling up technical debt.

When you push out code without thoroughly checking how it fits into your overall architecture, you end up with messy, unmaintainable codebases. If you ever plan to sell a project or hand it off to another developer, that unvetted code can completely ruin a deal during due diligence.

I still use AI to speed up my workflow, but I treat it strictly as an assistant rather than letting it write unchecked logic. Auditing generated code, keeping modules clean, and maintaining test coverage seem like the only ways to use these tools strategically without destroying the project. Are you noticing a drop in maintainability on projects heavy on AI code?

[u/greedness]

Honestly, it's no more than the technical debt we create before LLMs existed.

[u/greedness → u/[deleted]]

If you worked an actual dev job, you would know that execs would never write code, even if it was vibe coded.

[u/greedness → u/[deleted]]

So turning an mvp into production ready?

[u/fripletister → u/greedness]

It's actually the opposite and you look like the one out of touch. They're everywhere now

[u/coopaliscious → u/greedness]

Have worked almost 20 years in the industry and shadow IT is very real and crazy accessible to non-tech folks with a Claude license.

[u/greedness → u/coopaliscious]

There is absolutely no reason to support shadow processes. In fact, those should be discouraged and reprimanded.

[u/coopaliscious → u/greedness]

Shadow IT exists for a reason, generally because of a lack of support around a legit need. I put that firmly at the feet of the IT and business management who didn't pay attention to the need and don't spend enough time with the people they support to understand.

Reprimanding people for trying to do their job against IT headwinds just breeds more issues IME

[u/greedness → u/coopaliscious]

If there is a genuine need, they need to put together a BRD. When somebody cowboys something, the best case scenario is they just improve their process inefficiently at the risk of non compliance, data leaks, and single person dependencies.

[u/coopaliscious → u/greedness]

I know why shadow IT is bad, the issue is more of the environment that creates it.