A vibe coder describes an app to an AI tool and ships what comes out, without an engineering background behind it. I use the same kind of tools, so speed is not what separates us.
Someone with no engineering background, or you yourself, describing an app to an AI tool and shipping what comes out. The first version can appear in an afternoon, and it can look finished.
What you do not get is anyone who can tell you whether it is finished. The tool will say that it is.
For a demo, a landing page or an idea you want to try on real people this week, this is the right call. Nobody should pay a senior developer to find out whether anyone wants the thing.
If it works, you will know what to build properly, and you will have spent very little to learn it.
The difference is what happens after the agent says it is done. I read the code, run the real flow as a real user, check the security rules and look at what the database allows. A demo and a product look the same until someone signs in with the wrong account, a quota runs out or the store reviewer writes back.
A green build is not evidence that a feature works. The first two days of rebuilding this site, below, are the example I would point at: eight defects that the automated checks had passed.
That review is the slow part, and it stays with me. Agents made the writing fast; they did not make the checking fast.
My side of this rests on the products below. Each one opens, and each date comes from its commit history or my own project records.
This site, rebuilt from nothing.
Planning and the first design pages.
First commit of the new app. Its message records five defects the automated checks had passed.
The data platform, 38 tables, and three more defects no automated check had seen.
The rebuild took over this address.
Moved to a new host.
An offline-first Android app that records your own calls, with a web dashboard. Deliberately not on Google Play.
First commit. Call capture, browsing and playback were committed the same day.
The web dashboard went up.
The backend went live with its plans and release engineering, nearly three months later. The fast part was the first two days.
The first call is free and lasts thirty minutes. If this route suits your job better than I do, that is what you will hear from me.