Vibe coding: The word of the year that could actually break your website

Yep, you read that right. Vibe coding was officially crowned word of the year in 2025 by the Collins Dictionary – which was strange but also signalled a technical shift in web development.

Somehow, we’ve reached a point in tech history where letting AI generate code purely based on the ‘vibe’ of a prompt is not only happening, but happening so often it’s earned its own dictionary entry.

‘Vibe coding’ sounds catchy and harmless.

But behind the novelty lies a serious concern for businesses, developers, and anyone relying on their website or platform to actually work. Increasingly, teams are skipping proper development practices, sometimes disregarding their developers altogether, and pasting AI-generated code straight into live projects.

No testing. No reviews. No integration checks. Just vibes.

And that’s exactly when everything starts to fall apart.

So, what actually is vibe coding?

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Vibe coding is where, rather than manual coding, you prompt an AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Deep Seek or Microsoft Copilot, to write entire chunks of code, and integrate it into your existing code base simply trusting it, without proper testing, review, or integration checks.

The core problems with vibe coding (according to our devs)

1. The AI code is often wrong or incompatible: 

The majority of AI coding output is wrong, or at best, will work in isolation but will not work when integrated with your existing code. 

AI doesn’t understand your architecture, dependencies, or constraints therefore, it may create unexpected bugs that take longer to unravel than writing clean code from scratch.

2. The AI code is usually outdated, insecure and performance draining: 

Clients may be happy for something to simply work, but they could run into security issues. In part, this is due to AI tools’ reliance on outdated code and libraries. 

This outdated code can also make the website / software slow and also mean that it becomes obsolete really fast so they will have to rebuild it sooner, doubling the cost. 

3. The AI code is not scalable or maintainable 

It often isn’t scalable… the code provided may not work on a production scale and and can be incredibly difficult and time consuming to extend and build on top off, making future additions and new features take longer to implement than if it was bespoke built.

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When is vibe coding genuinely useful? (Web developer approved)

Despite all its pitfalls, vibe coding isn’t completely useless – you just need to know when to use it. Our devs have no objection to using AI at all, provided it is used strategically. Vibe coding actually makes sense for:

• Small, simple code snippets with proper reviewAI-generated code can be helpful for quick, small, low-risk pieces as long as they are reviewed and carefully integrated into our existing code.
• Logic checks & reasoning, not full builds Our developers agree: AI doesn’t truly shine when it just writes code for you, but when it helps you think through the code. It’s great for: sanity-checking an approach, exploring alternative solutions, explaining unfamiliar patterns and mapping out logical flow.
• Proof of Concept / Throwaway CodeIf you don’t want to spend hours writing something you may throw it away. You can use it for basics with the view that you will rewrite it, or potentially to take bits that are acceptable. Use it to:
  • Generate a rough prototype
  • Explore how something could work
  • Validate whether an idea is worth pursuing
  • Borrow small pieces that actually hold up.

Final thoughts: A friendly PSA from our dev team

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We hope you found this insight from our web developers useful. Above all, here’s our key message: please please please do not replace your devs with AI!!

AI is an assistant not a developer.

Let it help you with ideas, logic checks, or quick proofs of concept. But when it comes to building secure, scalable, reliable digital products, nothing replaces the expertise of a real dev who understands your system, goals, and the long-term health of your platform.

Your future self (and your budget) will thank you.