Vibe Coding in Practice: Flow, Technical Debt, and Guidelines for Sustainable Use

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Waseem, Muhammad, Ahmad, Aakash, Kemell, Kai-Kristian, Rasku, Jussi, Lahti, Sami, Mäkelä, Kalle, Abrahamsson, Pekka
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866909959248150528
author Waseem, Muhammad
Ahmad, Aakash
Kemell, Kai-Kristian
Rasku, Jussi
Lahti, Sami
Mäkelä, Kalle
Abrahamsson, Pekka
author_facet Waseem, Muhammad
Ahmad, Aakash
Kemell, Kai-Kristian
Rasku, Jussi
Lahti, Sami
Mäkelä, Kalle
Abrahamsson, Pekka
contents Vibe Coding (VC) is a form of software development assisted by generative AI, in which developers describe the intended functionality or logic via natural language prompts, and the AI system generates the corresponding source code. VC can be leveraged for rapid prototyping or developing the Minimum Viable Products (MVPs); however, it may introduce several risks throughout the software development life cycle. Based on our experience from several internally developed MVPs and a review of recent industry reports, this article analyzes the flow-debt tradeoffs associated with VC. The flow-debt trade-off arises when the seamless code generation occurs, leading to the accumulation of technical debt through architectural inconsistencies, security vulnerabilities, and increased maintenance overhead. These issues originate from process-level weaknesses, biases in model training data, a lack of explicit design rationale, and a tendency to prioritize quick code generation over human-driven iterative development. Based on our experiences, we identify and explain how current model, platform, and hardware limitations contribute to these issues, and propose countermeasures to address them, informing research and practice towards more sustainable VC approaches.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_11922
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Vibe Coding in Practice: Flow, Technical Debt, and Guidelines for Sustainable Use
Waseem, Muhammad
Ahmad, Aakash
Kemell, Kai-Kristian
Rasku, Jussi
Lahti, Sami
Mäkelä, Kalle
Abrahamsson, Pekka
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Vibe Coding (VC) is a form of software development assisted by generative AI, in which developers describe the intended functionality or logic via natural language prompts, and the AI system generates the corresponding source code. VC can be leveraged for rapid prototyping or developing the Minimum Viable Products (MVPs); however, it may introduce several risks throughout the software development life cycle. Based on our experience from several internally developed MVPs and a review of recent industry reports, this article analyzes the flow-debt tradeoffs associated with VC. The flow-debt trade-off arises when the seamless code generation occurs, leading to the accumulation of technical debt through architectural inconsistencies, security vulnerabilities, and increased maintenance overhead. These issues originate from process-level weaknesses, biases in model training data, a lack of explicit design rationale, and a tendency to prioritize quick code generation over human-driven iterative development. Based on our experiences, we identify and explain how current model, platform, and hardware limitations contribute to these issues, and propose countermeasures to address them, informing research and practice towards more sustainable VC approaches.
title Vibe Coding in Practice: Flow, Technical Debt, and Guidelines for Sustainable Use
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11922