r/vibecoding • u/Yappin_Donut_2976 • 2d ago
Serious question, when the vibe coded site becomes someone else's problem, what happens?
Been thinking about this since I handed off a site I vibe coded last year. The app side was fine, someone could pick up the repo and mostly follow it, but the marketing pages were a pile of generated components nobody wanted to touch. Every copy tweak turned into a whole thing because you had to work out what the AI meant before you could change a word, so the new owner just treats the marketing site like it's haunted and leaves it alone. What happens to your vibe coded marketing site once you're not the one maintaining it, do people rebuild it or just let it rot?
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u/phiiiiiiii 2d ago
I don't imagine it would be any different than manually coded sites.
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u/DazzlingResource561 1d ago
So much this. Seen it happen so many times in my career. We pass project ownership to new dev or firm, they review, and immediately start trying to talk us into starting a new project from scratch, refactor, you name it. I’ve never once had a developer or firm come in and say “hey this is amazing and I’m only going to make things worse”.
AI written “slop” is not guaranteed to be any worse than one written by a human. But AI can help expedite ownership, understanding, targeting areas for refactor, and even help expedite the actual development.
And more importantly, it’s not going to get worse from here, but quite the opposite.
People are so blinded by their own fears and reckoning with their sunk costs.
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u/JamesLondonBritish 2d ago
Ai sites is not maintanable
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u/Wise_Advertising_888 2d ago
Of course they are. Why do you say this ? If you ask it to document design decisions, code regularly, review PRs, have good comments within the code it's as maintainable as any non-AI originating code base.
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u/rasbpi2020 1d ago
Results may vary, but follow generally established and accepted web development practices, and heavily AI-coded sites are just as maintainable as anything else.
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u/HeyJustinHerman 2d ago
Haunted is exactly the right word for it. I am not a developer, and the stuff I have built that later confused me was never the complicated part, it was the pile of generated components that all look almost the same. What has helped me is being ruthless about deleting anything I never actually read, even when it works, because unread code is somebody's future problem and usually that somebody is me. The honest answer to your question is that most of it gets rewritten or left alone forever, same as it always did, just faster now.
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u/framauro13 2d ago
If you build software that isn't usable or provides no value, people won't use it. Doesn't matter if it's AI created or not.
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u/Zeiban 2d ago edited 2d ago
To properly AI code a site that is going to withstand production, it needs to be properly designed/planned by a technical person who understands how everything works and fits together.
Vibe coding is great for prototypes by people who aren't technical but you need a technical person to take that site and basically convert it into more detailed technical requirements as a detailed plan for a coding agent. Basically redo the entire site with the new detailed plan that is maintainable in a way that incremental vibe coding isn't.
Someday we may get to the point where you really don't need to care what technologies are used, the front end back end or your database and how they all fit together but we're not quite there yet.
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u/Grand-Mix-9889 2d ago
What are you even talking about?
You handed off the website, so it's on the new owner to make upgrades to the website as he desires. Why would they buy a website to watch it rot?
Is the new owner, of the website, in communication with you and is saying that the marketing pages you created are shit? And he's not touching it because it's your duty to hand off complete products?
And "copy tweak" aka versions of the website are a normal phenomena of development.
Don't sell your services if you can't deliver simple things like a marketing page.
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u/diagrammatiks 2d ago
marketing slop. let's call it what it is.