The Hidden Problems With
Vibe Coding A Website

Vibe coding can get a website or application working surprisingly quickly. You describe what you want to an AI tool, it generates the code and you keep prompting it until the result looks and behaves roughly as expected.

The problem is that seeing something work in front of you doesn’t tell you everything about the code behind it.

A website still needs to work across different devices, handle unexpected inputs, remain maintainable and be properly checked for security and performance. If nobody understands or reviews the code being generated, problems can sit unnoticed until the website has to do something beyond the original prompt.

What Is Vibe Coding?

The term “vibe coding” was coined by software developer Andrej Karpathy in 2025. In its original sense, it describes an approach where you rely heavily on an AI coding tool, prompt it to make changes and focus on the result without necessarily reading or understanding the code being produced. That distinction matters because using an AI coding tool doesn't automatically make a project vibe coded. A developer can use generated code while still reviewing it, understanding what has changed and testing the result. With vibe coding, that technical oversight can be missing because the person building the website is working mainly from what they can see and asking the AI to deal with problems as they appear. That can leave a fairly big gap between something looking finished and actually being ready to use as a live website.

A Working Website Can Still Have Problems

One of the difficulties with vibe coding is that the visible result can give you quite a lot of confidence. You ask for a contact form, test it and receive the submission. You ask for a navigation menu and the links work. You change a layout and everything looks right on your screen. From the front, the job can appear finished. Development involves checking more than the obvious route through a website. That form needs to cope with different inputs. The navigation needs to work at different screen sizes and with different methods of interaction. The layout needs checking beyond the device and browser it happened to be created on. Something working in the exact situation you've tried only proves that it works in that situation. There can still be problems elsewhere that you haven't found yet. Our Web Development work includes responsive development, testing and custom functionality because those details are part of getting a website ready for people to actually use.

Someone Still Needs To Understand The Code

Generated code can become difficult to deal with if nobody working on the website properly understands what it is doing. That might not cause an obvious problem while the website is first being put together. It becomes more important when something breaks or the business wants to change how part of the site works. At that point, somebody needs to understand where the relevant code is, how it interacts with everything around it and what else could be affected by changing it. Repeatedly prompting an AI tool to fix each visible problem can also result in further changes being added without addressing the underlying cause. Even when the end result works, another developer may later need time to understand what has been generated and why it was implemented that way. Websites rarely stay untouched after launch. Code that can be understood and maintained gives whoever works on it next a much better starting point.

Testing Needs To Go Further Than Clicking Around

Testing a website yourself is useful, but there are plenty of situations that are easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for. Responsive development is a good example. A layout can look right at one desktop width and one mobile width while behaving badly somewhere between the two. Different amounts of text can affect a layout. Navigation can run out of room and interactive elements can become difficult to use. Forms and other functionality introduce their own situations to check. Required fields, incorrect inputs and failed requests all need consideration. If the website communicates with an external service, you also need to know what happens when that service doesn't respond as expected. Accessibility needs deliberate testing too. A page looking readable doesn't tell you whether its structure or interactive elements work properly for somebody navigating with a keyboard, screen reader or another assistive technology. Human developers can miss these problems as well. With vibe coding, somebody without development experience may simply not know which situations need checking.

Security Can't Be Judged From What A Website Looks Like

Security is one area where a successful visible result tells you very little about what is happening underneath. A feature can work exactly as expected while still containing a vulnerability in its implementation. AI-generated code can contain security weaknesses, which is why generated code needs to be reviewed and tested before it is trusted in a live environment. The level of risk also depends heavily on what the website does. A simple prototype and a live system dealing with user accounts, personal information or payments do not carry the same consequences if something has been implemented incorrectly. Developers still need to consider areas such as how input is handled, how access is controlled and which dependencies are being introduced. Those responsibilities remain regardless of how the original code was produced. Our Website Security services include malware monitoring, firewall protection, software updates and backups. Security also needs to be considered during development because some issues come from how functionality has been built in the first place.

Generated Code Can Introduce Unnecessary Complexity

Another problem can appear when prompting produces a solution that works but is more complicated than the job requires. Additional code, libraries or packages may be introduced as the project develops. Those additions are not automatically a problem, but somebody needs to understand why they are there and whether the website actually needs them. Every dependency becomes another part of the project that may eventually need updating, troubleshooting or replacing. The same applies to performance. Extra JavaScript, unnecessary network requests or inefficient processing can add work for the browser or server. You may not notice much on a small test page, but the effect can become more relevant as the website grows. Developers have been capable of overcomplicating code for much longer than AI coding tools have existed. Vibe coding makes it particularly easy to keep accepting changes without seeing how much complexity is accumulating underneath the visible result.

The Problems Often Appear When You Need To Change Something

Getting the first version working is only the beginning of a website's life. Content changes. Software gets updated. Third-party services alter their systems. The business might decide it needs new functionality six months after launch. If the website has been built through a series of prompts without somebody understanding the resulting code, making those changes can require considerably more investigation. A developer taking over the project first has to establish how everything works before deciding how to change it safely. There is also the possibility of fixing one issue and unintentionally affecting something elsewhere. Proper testing matters after changes for exactly that reason. Our Website Maintenance service covers updates, monitoring, backups and technical support because websites need ongoing attention after they launch. Having code that another developer can understand makes that job considerably easier.

Using AI Doesn't Have To Mean Vibe Coding

There is a useful distinction to make here. A developer using an AI coding tool and reviewing the output is still responsible for the code that goes into the website. They can inspect what has been generated, change it where necessary and test it before anything goes live. Vibe coding becomes more problematic when that understanding disappears and the main test is simply whether the latest prompt produced something that appears to work. For a quick experiment or prototype, that may be enough for what somebody is trying to achieve. Once the code is being relied upon by a real business and its customers, there is more to consider. The method used to produce the code doesn't remove the need for somebody to understand it.

Vibe Coding Doesn't Remove The Development Work

The impressive part of vibe coding is how quickly an idea can turn into something you can see and use. The hidden problems tend to be the things you don't discover from looking at that first working version. A website needs to behave properly outside the exact route used while building it. Somebody needs to understand the code when requirements change, test how the website behaves in different situations and consider security and performance before problems reach users. Those parts of development still need doing. From my point of view, the important question is what happens after the code has been generated. If nobody understands what has been built, what has been tested or what could happen when it changes, seeing the website work once isn't enough to know that it's ready.

Need help building, fixing or maintaining a website?

Contact Just Digital through our online contact form, call us on 01942 498385 or email hello@wearejustdigital.co.uk and our development team can take a look.