An honest vibe coding review from shipping real production tools with AI: where it flies, where it bites, and the workflow that keeps you safe.
Vibe coding is real, it ships, and over the past six months it got dramatically better: enough that I owe you a correction. I say that as someone who uses it for actual products, not demos: a document converter that turns files into LLM-ready Markdown and JSON; a digital maturity scorecard; an AI Act compliance tool; a prompt workshop that grew into a small micro-SaaS with its own admin console; a process audit SaaS. They are live. People use them.
Six months ago I advised companies against vibe coding for 99 percent of their projects. I no longer stand behind that number, and this article explains why, with screenshots of live systems instead of promises: what changed in the plumbing and the models, my recalibrated verdict, the workflow that works, the proof, and where it still bites.