Human in the Loop

Vibe Coding: Citizen Developers Avoid the Pitfalls

• By Howard M. Cohen
• September 17, 2025

Since Andrej Karpathy first coined the term back in February 2025, the hype around “vibe coding” has become easily understandable. By definition, you describe the app you want in plain language, and your AI generates the code. With a few exchanges back and forth, you have a working prototype of your desired application running in minutes. For any normal businessperson who doesn’t think of themselves as a “developer," it feels magical.

But magic has a funny way of disappearing pretty quickly. Over the past few months, articles have started emerging on the risks of vibe coding, and these stories all share common themes: brittle code, strange bugs, security holes, and projects that don’t survive the journey from demo to full deployment.

Citizen developers, those of you who have been most excited about vibe coding, are also the ones most at risk of disappointment if you don’t adjust expectations. The good news: you don’t need to give up on vibe coding. You just need to use it wisely.

Pitfalls to Watch For

The first thing these articles have been reporting is that vibe-coded projects don’t seem to age well. In The Case Against Vibe Coding, from TheServerSide, June 2025, Walker Aldridge describes how AI-generated code tends to work in the short term but piles up hidden costs. When you go back later to extend or fix it, you discover how brittle and undocumented it really is.

• Reliability. A report in Hackaday recounted how an AI agent wiped out an entire database during a vibe-coding session, even after being told not to. Other developers have reported “random acts of stupidity,” like hallucinating package names or reintroducing bugs thought to be fixed.
• Over-Reliance on AI is also front and center. A July 2025 piece in FinalRoundAI warned that vibe coding risks producing “pseudo-developers”—citizen developers who can generate code but can’t read or debug it. That’s a recipe for disaster if you want your project to live longer than a demo.
• Security is a major concern. TechRadar reported on a popular vibe-coding platform that shipped apps with exposed API endpoints and weak authentication. At the same time, Medium highlighted the “Tea App Incident,” in which a data breach was traced back to some “shortcuts” taken during vibe-coded development. These aren’t just theoretical risks—they’re really happening.
• Expectations vs. Reality. A recent article in Towards AI summed it up pretty bluntly: vibe coding fails every enterprise team that expects to go from zero to production without disciplined software engineering. Many other experts agree that the shortfall isn’t in development best practices, it’s in fundamental engineering best practices. The results are the same: fast starts, painful finishes.

Smarter Ways to Use Vibe Coding

So how should a citizen developer approach vibe coding?

The key is to treat your AI-based development platform and vibe coding as a prototyping tool, not a production shortcut. Use it to sketch out your ideas, build a proof of concept to obtain buy-in, and test your workflows to ensure they work. When your outcome looks promising, that’s the time to pause and make sure it’s hardened, reviewed with systems engineers, and made ready for prime time.

At the same time, make sure you take the time to build your own technical literacy well enough to stay in control of your applications. Learn to read the code your AI produces. Get comfortable debugging simple errors. Use version control so you can track changes and roll back when needed. You don’t have to be a professional programmer, but you can’t afford to be blind to what the AI is handing you.

Don’t skip or skimp on testing. Even basic automated tests will catch problems that demos miss. And always test for worst-case and potential failure conditions, not just the “happy path” you’d like to see.

Treat security as non-negotiable, and not just a necessary delay. Never allow credentials or tokens in plain text. Always use proper authentication. Run basic vulnerability scans before letting others use your app. The same flaws that have already led to breaches in vibe-coded projects could just as easily happen in yours. Nobody is immune.

Context Engineering

Take the time now to learn the emerging art of context engineering that we’ve covered previously here in The Citizen Developer. The quality of what your AI delivers depends heavily on how you set it up. Clearly stated, detailed prompts, examples, and explicit constraints will guide it toward far more valuable results. Think of the AI as your junior assistant. The better the instructions you provide, the better the output.

Finally, know when to hand your project off. If your app gains users, touches sensitive data, or grows in complexity, don’t expect vibe coding to carry it alone. That’s the moment to involve IT or professional developers who can provide the necessary engineering context, while you continue to guide the project as the product owner.

Stick With It

Vibe coding is not going away. It’s part of the larger AI movement that’s reshaping how software is built. For citizen developers, it’s a powerful tool—but you need to understand what it’s good for, and what it isn’t.

The lesson from all the recent reports is simple: right now, vibe coding works best for experimentation and prototyping. Beyond that, it demands oversight, testing, and professional reinforcement.

Handled that way, it won’t trap you in the failures others are now warning about. Instead, it can help you turn ideas into working solutions faster—and safer.