Ask HN: How can you tell a site/app is vibe coded?

6 pointsposted 8 hours ago
by gkolli

Item id: 49290499

5 Comments

ra0x3

7 hours ago

For B2B SaaS apps, you'll notice that the panels and navs (top navigation, bottom navigation, left-navigation, etc) are much smaller (which is a slightly more 'modern' look) - e.g., OpenAI/Claude dashboards. In general components are more uniform/standard, fonts are smaller. Again, this is just what I've noticed for specifically B2B SaaS apps. If you ask Claude Design to build you one - you'll see exactly what I'm referring to.

I honestly don't mind it. For these B2B SaaS apps its nice to have some site consistency. It almost reminds me of a a new "Bootstrap" way of doing things.

roundabout-host

7 hours ago

Often there is the Inter font. Corners are usually quite rounded, there are lots of gradients. Also, I sometimes see weird descriptions of what a particular UI element does, even though it's obvious. It's possible that the LLM is putting them as a comment to the operator.

wbnns

5 hours ago

Biggest one for me is em dashes all throughout the content.

sjacob

8 hours ago

If you can't tell, does it matter?

NishanStepak

3 hours ago

It matters because AI produced material cannot be copyrighted. You need to be able to prove there are significant human edits to protect intellectual property.