I Tried Vibe Coding for 6 Months and Nearly Destroyed My Products

Published August 21st, 2025 • Based on Founder Reality Episode 6

Also available on: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube

Today I'm going to tell you about one of my most expensive mistakes this year - and why it might save your business from a similar disaster.

I fell hard for "vibe coding." If you haven't heard the term, it basically means using AI to code based on vibes rather than understanding. You know what you want, AI knows how to build it, but neither of you knows how it works.

Sounds amazing, right? That's what I thought too.

The $200/Month AI Coding Addiction

When Cursor first came out, I had that "holy shit, this changes everything" moment. I immediately jumped on the $200/month Claude plan - 20x more usage than normal users. I couldn't get my head out of it.

Within hours, I rebuilt SimpleDirect's entire marketing website using Claude Code. Learned Astro (a design language I'd never touched). The results looked professional, worked perfectly, and I felt like a coding genius.

That first hit was pure dopamine. I was hooked.

Project 1: The Mobile App Success Story

Our SimpleDirect mobile app had been dormant since 2021. We had new designs sitting in Figma for a year and a half - beautiful mockups that never saw daylight because we kept prioritizing other features.

With vibe coding, I fed Claude the Figma designs (screenshots, dev mode exports, the whole thing). Two days later? Complete app redesign. New look, modern interface, everything polished.

This project actually worked. It solved a real problem - bringing a dead feature back to life. I thought I'd found the holy grail of development.

I was wrong.

Project 2: The SimpleDirect Chat Nightmare

Riding high from the mobile app success, I decided to tackle SimpleDirect Chat - our internal AI team tool that had been collecting dust since 2022.

I ignored my dev team's advice and just started vibe coding. Two terminals open: Claude on the left for frontend, Claude on the right for backend.

Friends would give me feature requests, and I'd go home and build them the same night.

The velocity felt incredible. One evening I'd knock out 2-3 features. Within weeks, I had everything on the wishlist: file sharing, team channels, AI integration, custom workflows.

But here's what I didn't realize: I was creating a monster.

Hundreds of commits. Environment variables scattered everywhere. Markdown files in random directories. Architecture that made no sense. I was using GitHub Copilot to check Claude's work - AI checking AI's work.

When I asked my dev team to review the codebase, they went silent. Now I know why.

The repo was incomprehensible. Even to me. I had built a functioning product that I couldn't explain, maintain, or confidently release to customers.

Project 3: The Ghost Theme Disaster

The third project broke me completely.

I tried to redesign our SimpleDirect blog using Handlebars (the templating language for Ghost). This is a niche language that AI doesn't know well.

Claude confidently told me it had perfectly implemented my Figma designs. The reality? 72-point fonts everywhere. Broken margins. Massive white spaces. Text with no spacing. The site looked like a teenager's first HTML project.

I spent an entire evening trying to fix it. Hours on the subway, tweaking code I didn't understand, chasing problems I couldn't identify.

Finally, I gave up. The site was unusable, and I had no idea how to fix it.

That's when I realized: I was building on quicksand.

The Tea App Wake-Up Call

Right around this time, the Tea app got completely hacked. If you missed it, T was a popular dating app where women could anonymously report toxic men. It hit #1 on the App Store.

The hack was devastating. Driver's licenses stolen. Personal addresses leaked. Lawsuits incoming.

The cause? Basic Firebase vulnerabilities. The kind of security holes that happen when you build fast without understanding what you're creating.

I could see my own projects in that story. SimpleDirect Chat, running in production, built with code I didn't understand. What if we got hacked? What if customer data was compromised?

The liability scared me. The embarrassment would be worse.

Why I Quit Vibe Coding

Don't get me wrong - I appreciate what these tools do. They've democratized coding in an incredible way. Only 1% of people could code before; now anyone can build functional applications.

But here's the thing: when everyone can do something, the industry changes completely.

Think about cameras. When iPhones put cameras in everyone's pocket, the photography industry transformed. Everyone could take photos, but only the best photographers thrived.

The same thing is happening with software. When everyone can vibe code, only the best teams will capture most of the value. I predict 1-5% of companies will control 90-95% of software industry revenue.

The winners won't be vibe coders. They'll be exceptional developers using AI to build 10x faster than before.

The Market Concentration Reality

Here's what's coming: When hundreds of customer support apps exist (all vibe coded, all similar), the market will naturally choose one winner. When there are dozens of project management tools, people will default to the household name.

We're heading toward extreme concentration, not democratization.

The companies that survive will have the best engineers in the world using AI as a force multiplier. They'll understand every line of code, every security implication, every architectural decision.

Meanwhile, vibe coders will be left with unmaintainable codebases and security vulnerabilities they can't fix.

What I'm Doing Now

I've basically stopped using Cursor and Claude for coding. Instead, I'm focusing on:

Empowering my actual developers. They understand every line of code and can use AI to build 5-10x faster while maintaining quality.

Design and strategy. My time is better spent on problems that require human judgment, not code generation.

Planning and architecture. Making sure we build the right things, not just building things quickly.

The mobile app project taught me that vibe coding works great for:

• Prototypes and demos
• Reviving dormant features
• Quick MVPs for testing ideas

But it's dangerous for:

• Production applications
• Commercial products
• Anything involving user data
• Long-term codebases

For Developers Worried About AI

If you're a CS student or developer worried about being replaced by vibe coders, don't be. If you're genuinely good at your craft, you won't be replaced - you'll be enabled.

Companies will always need developers who understand what they're building. The difference is you'll be 5-10x more productive with AI assistance.

Practice your fundamentals. Master system design. Understand security. When the vibe coding bubble bursts, real developers will be more valuable than ever.

The Bigger Picture

This experience taught me something crucial about building in an AI-first world: when everyone can build complex features cheaply, simplicity becomes your competitive advantage.

The companies that win won't be the ones with the most features. They'll be the ones that solve real problems elegantly, with code they understand and can maintain.

Complexity doesn't equal better results. In most cases, the simplest approach wins.

That's a lesson worth hundreds of thousands of dollars - even if I had to learn it the hard way.

What's your experience with AI coding tools? Have you run into similar issues, or found better approaches? Email me at george@founderreality.com - I read every message.

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Daily thoughts: @TheGeorgePu on Twitter/X