Welcome to the first part of our mini-series, Vibe Coding: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In this series, we’re taking an honest look at what AI-assisted development really means for organizations today—the momentum it creates, the risks it introduces, and the hard questions leaders can’t afford to ignore.

So, What Exactly Is Vibe Coding?

“Vibe coding” is the growing practice of using AI tools to generate functional software with minimal traditional programming knowledge — letting developers move faster than ever and giving non-developers the ability to build real software for the first time.

The benefits of AI-assisted development are impossible to ignore:

• Explosive productivity gains
• Democratization of development
• Faster innovation cycles
• Increasing reliance on AI-generated code

This isn’t theoretical. It’s already happening inside companies today. Here’s how vibe coding played out at one company.

A Story Playing Out in Real Time

At Rightwave Solutions, CEO Mark Clive was hearing the same message from his board at every meeting:

Adopt AI. Move faster. Do more with less.

The direction was clear—and the company responded aggressively.

Half the development team began using ChatGPT. The other half adopted Claude Code. Almost overnight, productivity surged. Tasks that once took days were completed in hours. Features moved from concept to production faster than ever before.

It worked.

To establish some structure, Rightwave partnered with an offshore developer from Programmers.ai. Their guidance was simple but important:

Treat AI-generated code as a starting point—not a finished product.

At the time, that distinction felt more like a best practice than a necessity.

When Faster Feels Like Better

Encouraged by the results, Mark made a bold decision.

He reduced the development team by half—laying off six of the company’s twelve developers.

And initially, it looked like a masterstroke.

• Features shipped faster
• Backlogs shrank
• Customer satisfaction improved
• The board was thrilled

From the outside, it appeared to validate what many leaders were beginning to believe: AI could replace a meaningful portion of traditional development work.

The Power of “Everyone’s a Developer”

The excitement didn’t stay within engineering.

Inspired by what his team had accomplished, Mark decided to try it himself. Over the course of a weekend, he used Claude Code to build an employee recognition app for the company’s intranet.

No tickets. No backlog. No engineering lift.

And it worked.

This is the promise of AI-generated development: the ability for anyone—engineer or not—to turn ideas into functioning software.

It represents a major shift:

• Business users can build their own tools
• Bottlenecks in engineering teams begin to disappear
• Innovation moves closer to where problems actually exist

For organizations, this opens the door to a level of agility that was previously impossible.

A Small Crack in the Foundation

A few days after launching the app, something unexpected happened.

The new application overloaded a backend database and disrupted several internal systems. It had unintentionally bypassed standard review and governance processes, creating a ripple effect across the environment.

The issue was fixed quickly. No lasting damage was done.

But it was an early signal—one that was easy to overlook in the middle of rapid success.

The Bigger Picture

Rightwave’s story isn’t unusual.

Across industries, organizations are embracing AI-generated code to:

• Accelerate delivery
• Expand who can build software
• Gain competitive advantage through speed

And in many cases, it’s working.

But there’s an important nuance that often gets lost in the momentum:

AI makes it easier to create code. It doesn’t guarantee the code is understood, maintainable, or resilient.

Vibe coding optimizes for getting to “it works.”

It doesn’t always account for what happens after.

Takeaway

This shift is real.

It’s valuable.

And it’s already happening.

Organizations that embrace AI-assisted development are moving faster than ever before—and unlocking entirely new ways of building software.

But as usage grows, so do the questions.

Up Next in the Series

In Part 2, we’ll explore what begins to happen when AI-generated code becomes the foundation of your systems:

What happens when nobody truly owns—or fully understands—the code running your business?