6/7/2026 at 10:44:12 AM
We already have the business side come with requirements in the form of 'solutions' that they have thought up, which more often than not are Rube Golberg-esque contraptions, that you have to conversationally reverse engineer to arrive at the actual requirements.In the future they will come with their 'ready' solution, already 'working' and be even less receptive to look at design and architecture holistically. Just make it like that. And why do you need to spend X man hours? The thing is basically already done!
by sfjailbird
6/7/2026 at 11:10:03 AM
I have seen this already. Vibecoded top to bottom.The downside is that the business people don't understand why you can't just put their app in production as is. And then there's a lot of pressure to make it happen quickly "because we can use AI to move fast". This is going to come down to healthy organization dynamics, and hopefully represents a learning opportunity for leadership.
The upside is that the idea has already been proven out much more thoroughly than a sketch on a napkin. Claude has already prompted them about edge cases and design decisions. It's very likely that at some point they had to explicitly tell Claude "don't worry about that and just make an assumption", or "I actually don't like that interaction after trying it a few times, can you do a differently". They had to write out much of their idea in clear and direct language in order to prompt the AI. They've probably been playing with their own toy because it's fun to play with toys you summoned from thin air, so they've had a chance to discover the experience and refine their own preferences.
It's probably a net negative right now because the "ship it what's the problem team" pressure is intense and stupid and demoralizing and miserable to work under. But I think it will stabilize and it might be a net positive in future projects.
by gwerbin
6/7/2026 at 6:00:45 PM
> business people don't understand why you can't just put their app in productionI’d flip that around and say that engineers don’t understand that sometimes you _can_ just put their app into production. It might take some cleanup, and some clever ways of deploying it in isolation, but some of these “vibe coded prototypes” — many made by technical business people (they do exist) – are much closer to production-ready than you might initially assume.
I’d encourage you to challenge your assumptions before dismissing the possibility. I’ve personally seen this workflow produce real production code, used by customers, in an extremely rapid feedback loop. Now is the time to adapt, not push back. Keep an open mind or you’ll be left behind.
by chatmasta
6/7/2026 at 11:03:41 PM
> Keep an open mind or you’ll be left behind.An open mind to what? To yolo deployment of dodgy code straight into production? Moving fast and breaking things?
> I’ve personally seen this workflow produce real production code, used by customers, in an extremely rapid feedback loop.
Yes. I've seen it as well. I've also seen what happens. It goes wrong.
Should the engineers building your cars, your house, all other infrastructure also "keep an open mind" to slopping up their work?
Your next words will be "I'm not working on something safety critical".
You are. Even the most basic CRUD app handling personal data of any kind of safety critical these days. Data leaks alone KILL.
by SlinkyOnStairs
6/7/2026 at 11:29:52 PM
An open mind to not having a knee jerk reaction to “this is vibe coded therefore it’s not production-ready.” The delta between the prototype and production is likely far lower than you think, and many engineers are sneering at the prototype without actually looking at it or attempting to spend a few weeks applying engineering discipline to bring it up to scratch.by chatmasta
6/8/2026 at 12:07:26 AM
Re-read what you wrote yourself.What is being sneered at is these prototypes being put into production. What is being demanded is that additional engineering time to make sure it's actually up to scratch.
by SlinkyOnStairs
6/7/2026 at 11:36:31 PM
> Now is the time to adapt, not push back. Keep an open mind or you’ll be left behind.That’s not the gating factor. Who picks up the liability accountability and picks up the pager duty at o’dark thirty when it breaks in production, that’s the big gate. That long tail of accountability for operational risk weeds out a ton of Eager Ethan’s who want to see something go live yesterday. Because the success of launching has many fathers while the failures in the operational long tail is an orphan.
Get them to sign up for the long tail troubleshooting operations of the product. They are after all, now the SME on the product having built 90% of it. The full promise of AI in such a world is deploying and operating an AI-forward application is an artificial distinction, and full conviction means fully committing to the operational model.
by yourapostasy
6/7/2026 at 9:47:13 PM
I actually agree with you, although I don't agree with the "open your mind or be left behind" sentiment. I left it implicit in my example, but in my actual experience they actually can't put it in production as it is because there are genuine broken things or features they can't add without rewriting big chunks of the system. The worst are the ones that are not obviously broken but are just wrong, like incorrect numbers in a financial report.But yes, I do agree that some engineers and some engineering teams are slow and cautious where it's not needed, to the point of obstructing rapid prototyping and iteration. And yes I agree that AI will be good to help push them to overcome it.
by gwerbin
6/7/2026 at 10:29:17 PM
> rewriting big chunks of the systemthe costs of doing this is much lower than it has been
testing to make sure thats safe to do maybe hasnt caught up, but its no longer an unreasonable task
by 8note
6/7/2026 at 11:47:21 PM
It's not about turning out the necessary lines of code. It's about doing the critical thinking, validating of assumptions, etc. which was not done the first time around.Yes, AI can assist with the brute force of broad scale factoring. But without the humans and domain experts involved, you are going to either keep flailing around at the cost of millions of tokens, or something actually really bad in production that you don't even understand and won't work for your business.
The lines of code have never been a bottleneck for the actual engineering team. That's why AI is so good for expediting the prototype cycle and allowing stakeholders to develop their own prototypes, but why you still need someone who actually knows what they're doing to finish the project, whether they are manually typing the lines of code or letting Claude do it.
by gwerbin
6/8/2026 at 12:23:17 AM
I cannot wait for those business people to run the ops themselves for their vibe coded apps in production.by Ancalagon
6/9/2026 at 2:54:58 PM
Vibecode a clone of the production stack and give them the keys and tell them to figure it out lolby mekdoonggi
6/8/2026 at 5:44:42 AM
In my experience, business people are chomping at the bit to build and manage the ops for their apps, but it's always an "IT Operating Model" that is thrown back at themby condwanaland
6/8/2026 at 5:56:09 AM
I have never met a product or sales person chomping at the bit to manage the PagerDuty of the apps they peddle to managementby Ancalagon
6/8/2026 at 7:57:29 PM
As someone who's had to deal with a fair share of these types of sentiments, they have been, without exception, based on incompetence, and demonstrably wrong.That isn't to say that there aren't cases where "just do the happy path" is actually sufficient, and the right thing to do. However, and bit overly simplified, but the non-happy-path is almost always the important parts of a system. It's the monitoring. Disaster recovery. Error handling and correction. Well thought out data models that prepare for future features, etc.
by okamiueru
6/8/2026 at 7:19:01 PM
In all honesty: no, and no.Security, legal considerations, internal controls and tracking for monitoring.
See, corporate means usually financial services. Money laundering is a thing here and there are deliberately checks and controls implemented as well as boundaries which don't allow for "deploy to PROD instantly" processes since they pose a red flag.
For example, PEN testing is mandatory as well as token handling to connect to the right backend.
Legal, as a hint, has a show stopping word in here. Every text, that surfaces, needs to be approved first, and also documented. "How inflexibel and anti-business" you might think, but here is the kicker: the wrong words as well as wording gets you into trouble faster than you can imagine.
Here is one example out of many dangerous mistakes, that cost you dearly besides a noticeable shitstorm:
We (one of the largest banks operating globally) were 2017 (!) already closely monitored which means, every change would not be undetected. And we are not talking about days later, but instantly, seconds later.
We have to follow certain obligations in certain countries to conform to legislation. So we are also obliged to incorporate changes, but these had to follow strictly the letters of the law. So if you deploy this change 5 minutes too early or too late for a specific day, you could be hit by a lawsuit. Ridiculous you might say and I somehow have to agree but my opinion does not play a relevant role here or better: won't change because I follow law while keeping my opinion.
And this is also something that disallows for the "vibe code to PROD" myth: Usually many teams and departments are involved.
I am glad I worked in corporate, because my understanding went from the cocky and totally arrogant "One team from us would beat you all easily. You are totally outdated." line to the "Well, now I understand that it is a difference to be under scrutiny globally and have to define responsibility as well as accountability depending on the context. And god forgive me, that I had no insights into a huge regulated machine, that has serious redundancy, however it works and rebels do more harm than good."
by _the_inflator
6/7/2026 at 6:58:47 PM
[dead]by preg_match
6/7/2026 at 12:44:09 PM
I've working on a small side project with a non technical friend for a couple months. It's really small but we are selling it to some clients.The other day my friend discovered lovable and vibe coded an entire app and he started feeling like I was scamming him. Why would I take weeks or months in building our app if he could do it on hours?
He might be stubborn but ended up blindly believing me, but I couldn't find a good way of explaining that a prototype wasn't a final product. It has lots of errors, doesn't consider edge cases and it's impossible to fix if something breaks. Of course what I said didn't mean much because he didn't understand what I was talking about.
How do you communicate this problem? That there's much more than what you see in a frontend? Seems really hard to explain to non technical people.
by slyzmud
6/7/2026 at 12:51:31 PM
It's the same problem we've had all along though, right? Maybe it's magnified now but the essence of the confusion is the same.by gwerbin
6/7/2026 at 1:05:30 PM
Show it. Pick a missed edge case or breaking point in his app and demonstrate the pain the customer is going to encounter. You don't have to live in the realm of hypotheticals. He has given you a concrete, but flawed, implementation that offers proof of your message.by 9rx
6/7/2026 at 2:47:39 PM
I did it and he "fixed" it with AI, making him even more convinced of it.I'm pretty sure something else must have broken but didn't see it immediately.
I guess eventually it will fall from its own weight but I'm surprised how far he was able to get.
by slyzmud
6/7/2026 at 3:17:26 PM
You are convincing me of it too. It is clear that your friend still needs your system thinking to point out edge cases and whatnot, but if you applied that by spending a couple of days adding a test suite to provide the missing validation, it seems like together you could have a pretty robust product built in less than a week. What justifies a couple of months?by 9rx
6/7/2026 at 1:45:26 PM
let them launch and failit’s the only way they learn
by throwaway98797
6/7/2026 at 10:15:50 PM
"Prompt more" is my default answer now.Your 80% of the way there? Keep going!
If they're satisfied with the result, I save myself a reluctant client.
If they realize the difference, I save myself an explanation and we can start talking about good foundations.
by Lalabadie
6/7/2026 at 10:49:54 PM
they don't know that it'll break, that's the problem of courseby make3
6/7/2026 at 11:53:21 PM
I think the point is that those are the clients you don't want, so you encourage them to select themselves out of working with you. The fact that it might be bad for their own business is not relevant to you as a consultant.by gwerbin
6/8/2026 at 2:02:02 AM
I think it's normal for non-technical people to have no idea of how things work and of what to expect. It's our responsibility to communicate. And, within reason, theirs to listen.by make3
6/8/2026 at 10:32:32 AM
This can only happen if they have reason or motivation to trust the expertise, and an expectation that the relationship can be fruitful.Like you said, they must at least be willing to listen.
by Lalabadie
6/8/2026 at 5:38:07 AM
[flagged]by Nicci-K26
6/8/2026 at 5:10:09 AM
[flagged]by Nicci-K26
6/7/2026 at 11:34:08 AM
> It's very likely that at some point they had to explicitly tell Claude "don't worry about that and just make an assumption",Non technical folks vibe coding aren't explicitly telling Claude anything other than "Accept"
by iamjs
6/8/2026 at 5:16:16 PM
That will never get fixed. Early in my career I demoed a Java Swing UI, emphasized it didn't actually do anything repeatedly. A manager declared it done. They'd "seen it working".by nitwit005
6/7/2026 at 11:14:37 PM
> This is going to come down to healthy organization dynamics, and hopefully represents a learning opportunity for leadershipWhat is it like working for organizations with healthy dynamics and leadership that is capable of learning?
I don't think I've ever encountered it in my professional career.
by bluefirebrand
6/8/2026 at 12:31:29 AM
If you can vibe code it, you can vibe deploy it, and deal with the consequences.by almostdeadguy
6/7/2026 at 10:26:22 PM
it would be fun to get access to those chat logs, to pull out detailed requirements decisions and get some more structure togetherby 8note
6/7/2026 at 11:13:51 PM
> The thing is basically already done!I'm seeing so many of these come in with "this is 95% done, just need a couple of minor tweaks for production release"
"Minor tweaks" being fix the layout so it's not messed up if the browser isn't exactly 1920px wide, sometimes these filters and sorting don't seem to work right and the app doesn't seem to refresh new values properly after an action.
No matter the issue it's pre-estimated by the business as "should be a quick fix, for an experienced dev" because they (allegedly) did 95% of the work already.
by cube00
6/7/2026 at 11:36:34 PM
Could we hop on a quick call to get a quick status on that quick fix?by getnormality
6/8/2026 at 8:01:44 AM
Just wanted to check in on how we're tracking, I've booked a quick sync meeting for 4:45pm on Friday followed by a release cadence checkpoint meeting for 9am on Monday.by cube00
6/8/2026 at 12:37:01 AM
> In the future they will come with their 'ready' solution, already 'working' and be even less receptiveThis has already been common in the audio engineering world for some time, as home demos of music approach professional quality. As you forsee here, people get used to what they have and become even less inclined to accept changes in a new professional mix.
by Nition
6/8/2026 at 1:50:31 AM
There was this video which showed film directors doing something similar. They film their scene with “filler” music previously used in some other film. Then they hand the scene to the music director and ask a score for it, which forces the director to make something very similar to the filler music. It then makes all film music sound similar.This was only possible due to the “productivity boost” of digital editing pipelines, which allowed directors to edit immediately after filming.
https://youtu.be/7vfqkvwW2fs from 5:50 on but the whole video is a masterpiece.
by testdelacc1
6/7/2026 at 11:10:14 PM
> We already have the business side come with requirements in the form of 'solutions' that they have thought upWe have that too and more often than not, it’s not what a customer wants. Yes there are some very talented customer facing people (PMs, CSMs, TAMs etc.) that also have a natural knack for translating customer problems into product features with great usability. However, for the rest, skipping the part of defining the problem and letting other functions to come up with a solution, usually leads to catastrophic messes that waste a lot of engineering and other resources. When someone shows up with a solution, you risk wasting months of resources in making production ready software, only to find, customers hate it and the solution either doesn’t fix the problem or introduces new ones.
by darth_avocado
6/7/2026 at 12:05:57 PM
I honestly much prefer this to the old way where the only mode of communication was speech or text. I now often understand a lot more holistically what the person coming with their product wants with just a demo + a conversation.Of course you need the person making that vibe product to understand it's just a mockup of their idea and that it'll change. But I would argue this has always been a necessary quality for a product person.
by frde_me
6/7/2026 at 1:09:48 PM
thats really sad that only way you can understand something is with pictures and demos. like a little toddler.when they already come up with a working model it doesnt really leave any room for abstract thought because now you are in concerte world . They see you as a machine that turns mocks into impls ( maybe you youself see yourself like that).
its ok if you see yourself as a code monkey monkey doing menial job of implementing someones mockup. But that job wont be here long and you will be on the streets holding "can turn working mocks to production code for food" signs.
honestly your attitude scares me more than some business guy building crap in lovable.
by dominotw
6/7/2026 at 2:05:15 PM
I can understand words, but having more diverse medias for communication lets a person express strictly more than before.Sometimes words are better, sometimes a visual demo is better.
Is your solution to the problem you presented that you should artificially restrict what a person can express just to keep your own personal moat?
I prefer the alternative, let a person express themselves and grow thanks to AI, while keeping the necessary culture and boundaries to where it's also accepted for _me_ to cross boundaries and express my ideas to them in the same way. Or suggest other ways to express those ideas.
We then become a marketplace of ideas in a much deeper sense than before, where product managers would already expect you to implement what they want, but without them being able to convey it properly.
If I didn't have original ideas and didn't think I could compete in that marketplace of ideas, I would be scared like you convey in your message. But I'm confident that my value is not about translating things into code, it's because I have original thoughts I can convey to other people (and to AIs). (and about understanding architecture and systems to a degree that keeps me valuable even if all the code itself is written by AI without my direct involvement)
by frde_me
6/7/2026 at 4:30:00 PM
A (good) picture is worth 1024 words.by tanseydavid
6/8/2026 at 5:26:26 AM
Holy projection batman.Might I suggest taking a step back and asking yourself why you were so triggered by the prior post. You made a bunch of mental leaps that are not supported by the prior post. Won't waste my time going through all of them, but the suggestion that they couldn't understand before has no basis in reality, they merely said it's easier to understand with increased fidelity of mocks.
The words can't hurt you. Deep breaths. :)
If your goal was discourse, might I suggest leaving the insults out of the message, it rarely is effectual.
If your goal was simply to insult, might I suggest leaving HNs, your anger and insults do the community a disservice.
by snayan
6/7/2026 at 1:47:08 PM
no business person will ever want to consider the right tradeoffs without being forced tothe ai making assumptions can’t get it right
by throwaway98797
6/7/2026 at 6:37:04 PM
What an insane replay.by xboxnolifes
6/7/2026 at 10:51:01 PM
I can say that its happening right now (not where I work, at a place I used to). Even being shipped to production as-is, with data loss and security issues in tow. We're cooked hahaby girvo
6/7/2026 at 12:03:48 PM
I’ve seen that play out already as wellThen your job as SE just becomes reviewing and untangling vibe-coded stuff
by ex-aws-dude