We can build an app in an evening now. Type one prompt, watch the code stream in, and there’s a working demo before the coffee goes cold. Post the screen recording on social media that night: “Built a whole SaaS in three hours, no code written by hand.”
Nineteen days later, a customer emails to say she can see other people’s bookings. Support finds the app breaks the moment eleven people try to log in at once. Another customer asks, were their payment details secure. There aren’t good answers, because the prompt that built the demo never asked those questions either.
The vending machine problem
There is a huge difference between what people think vibe coding is and what shipping software actually takes. The picture in most people’s heads works like a vending machine: prompt goes in, website comes out. What sits underneath that website, the part nobody screen-records for a LinkedIn post, is fourteen separate disciplines deciding whether the thing survives contact with real users.
Think of it as an iceberg. The ten percent above the waterline. The prompt and the demo are the small part poking above the water. Everything that makes a product trustworthy, fast, and still running next week sits below the surface, and it is considerably bigger than the tip.
