Vibe coding
Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want to an AI tool in plain language and accepting the code it generates, largely without reading or understanding that code. The term was coined by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy in early 2025. It is fast for prototypes and personal tools, and risky for anything handling customers, money, or sensitive data.
01why it matters for a business
Vibe coding has made it realistic for a founder, operator, or analyst to produce a working prototype in an afternoon. That is valuable: ideas can be tested with something real instead of slides, and internal teams can build small tools without waiting for engineering. Many executives have now seen a demo built this way and asked why a production system should take longer.
The answer is everything the demo skipped: authentication, permissions, data validation, error handling, security, performance under load, backups, monitoring, and code someone can maintain. Code nobody has read may contain exposed secrets, missing access checks, or logic that fails quietly. A vibe-coded prototype is a strong specification for the real thing, not the real thing.
02what it looks like in practice
An operations director uses an AI app builder to make a tool that tracks equipment rentals across job sites. It works well for her team, so other branches want it. Before rollout, an engineering review finds that every user can see and edit every branch's data, API keys are embedded in the browser code, and there is no backup. The prototype becomes the spec: the screens and workflow are kept, and the system underneath is rebuilt with proper access control, a real database, and tests.
03common mistakes
- Putting a vibe-coded app in front of customers, or connecting it to production data, without review.
- Assuming it works because the demo worked. Test with real data, real users, and failure cases.
- Treating a prototype's build time as the estimate for a production build.
- Throwing the prototype away. It is an excellent way to capture requirements.
04related terms
- Proof of concept vs productionA proof of concept (PoC) is a quick, limited build that shows an idea can work, usually on sample data without real users.
- Technical debtTechnical debt is the future cost created when software is built in a faster or easier way instead of a sounder one: shortcuts, missing tests, outdated dependencies, tangled code, and undocumented decisions.
- AI coding agentAn AI coding agent is an AI system that performs software engineering tasks with some autonomy: reading a codebase, writing and changing code, running tests, fixing failures, and opening changes for review.
- Claude CodeClaude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool.
05where insomnia club fits
Insomnia Club takes AI-built prototypes to production: keeping what works, rebuilding what is unsafe, and adding the security, data handling, and tests a real business system needs.
see prototype to production →tell us what keeps you up at night.
Scoped by the people who ship it. Priced before we start.
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