Ask HN: Are you hesitant to install vibe-coded apps?

11 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by ex-aws-dude

Item id: 50090796

11 Comments

reureu

3 hours ago

I'm hesitant to, but more because it seems that many vibe coded apps* that I've come across have a week's worth of commits and no activity for the past 2-3 weeks. I have trouble imagining somebody who one-shotted an app is going to support that app for any reasonable lifespan. And, to your point, not only am I concerned about longevity of the app, but security and data harvesting concerns are also there.

*"vibe coded apps" in this context are ones whose description is full of emojis, the repo is in somebody's recently created personal GitHub account, and where there are likely already other apps addressing the same or similar use cases.

fnoef

3 hours ago

How do you know if it's vibe coded or not? 60% of any app is third party dependencies that some random guy across the globe maintains, and the developer never even checked how the code is written.

Also, why vibe coded apps are prone to have viruses, and non vibe coded apps are virus free and have perfect security?

If it's open source, you can check the code, vibe coded or not (I doubt the majority does).

If it's a commercial app, the developer(s) probably care more about making money than writing the "perfectly secure" app, vibe coded or not.

dormento

25 minutes ago

With AI you cannot know for sure if an app is vibe coded or not, especially when there's no source code.

Therefore, one must assume it is always vibe coded.

Therefore, one must always be hesitant :(

fodkodrasz

5 hours ago

No. I simply don't (apart from company mandated ones like Claude Code), or do it in isolated VMs.

officeplant

2 hours ago

I'm hesitant to even use Linux due to vibe coding bleeding into the kernel.

vegnus

2 hours ago

I would ask why they chose for it to need to be installed, rather than just delivering some web application

redrove

3 hours ago

Depends on the type of app, complexity, and product space. If it’s something I know well and it’s simple — why not vibe code my own?

ezrasu

4 hours ago

Speaking from the builder side: In my case no. To prevent this sort of problem I would like to learn relate knowledge then ask agent to audit one by one. User side: write a skill then ask Agent to audit it rather than just ask agent with one sentence

BorisMelnik

3 hours ago

depends on the source, but if it is open source and someone I trust I suppose the same amount of suspiciousness asa non vibe coded app?

timpera

5 hours ago

At this point, I always ask my AI tool of choice to audit the Github before installing an open-source tool, so I'm not that concerned about security.

I'm mostly hesitant to install vibe-coded apps because they sadly tend to be shiny but quickly-abandoned slop, with tons of bugs or performance issues.

asdff

4 hours ago

The sort of product of a vibe coded app is just not that great in all. Giant codebase usually, have fun reviewing that.

These sorts of pre ai github abandonware projects were usually quite leanly written, did a simple thing and that's it. Feature complete, and easy to build upon yourself if you wanted to take it further.