Hello, and welcome to Inc.’s 1 Smart Business Story! Today’s story dives into vibe coding — the practice of developing software just by having a conversation with an AI tool rather than rigorous planning or formal methodology.
Using artificial intelligence as a tool for coding promised to help those with no computer science background build their own apps, and rattled those with actual experience as companies let go of expensive developers for a cheaper alternative. But now, fintech companies like Clint are planning to ban the practice altogether in the wake vibe code-engineered security holes and flaws that have popped up in regression testing. A year into the trend, programmers and businesses are wondering if vibe coding is just a risky fad.
In this piece, Inc. contributor and entrepreneur Joe Procopio explores:
Why Clint’s CTO is pulling back from vibe coding
How vibe coding has opened up the gates for data breaches and bots
What vibe coding taught industries about jumping into AI trends
BY JOE PROCOPIO
If anyone can vibe code, imagine how many developers we can fire!
“Vibe coding is a nightmare and I’m getting ready to ban it,” said “Clint,” the CTO of a mid-sized fintech.
He’s not kidding around.
“We opened more security holes in 2025 than we did in all of 2020 to 2024. It’s a miracle we haven’t been breached yet. We keep catching flaws in regression testing—which is pretty late—and at some point, we’re going to miss something, and then it’s someone’s head. Probably mine.”
In the back half of last year, I’ve heard from a growing number of tech leaders and current and former software developers about their chaotic journey with AI coding in enterprise tech. It was almost always a journey that started with vibe coding as a first experimental step.
Now those leaders and developers are implying that vibe coding is just a fad, maybe a marketing ploy to sell AI coding to the enterprise, because if AI allows anyone to be able to code, it triggers the question:
“How many of these expensive software developers do we really need?”
That’s a lot of smoke. I’m a former expensive software developer, a current entrepreneur, and a half-hearted vibe coder. I’m going to recklessly speculate about vibe coding based on some conspiratorial-sounding conversations I’ve had with tech leaders and experienced software developers and see if there’s fire.
To finish reading this story read more at Inc.com