AfterVibe: What Remains When the Conversation Ends

Researchers submitted AfterVibe, a framework that recovers natural-language specifications from vibe coding sessions, to arXiv on 10 July 2026. AfterVibe uses an LLM to extract an abstract spec from a code artifact and its conversation trajectory, then validates it by having a second blind AI agent re-implement the artifact from the spec alone and grading the result through a multi-tier pipeline. Across 72 real-world vibe-coded projects from a company's internal coding sessions, multiple independent regenerations scored a mean of 5.06 out of 6.0, and iterative refinement raised the score to 5.74, outperforming existing human-authored descriptions.

Computer Science Software Engineering Submitted on 10 Jul 2026 Title:AfterVibe: What Remains When the Conversation Ends View PDF https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.09900 HTML experimental https://arxiv.org/html/2607.09900v1 Abstract:We present AfterVibe, a framework that recovers natural-language specifications from a vibe coding session. Given a code artifact and the conversation trajectory that produced it, AfterVibe uses an LLM to extract an abstract natural-language specification capturing the developer's intent, and validates it through a regeneration test: a second, blind AI agent re-implements the artifact from the spec alone, and the resulting code is graded against the original through a multi-tier validation pipeline. Spec quality is thus measured by whether an agent can regenerate passing code; if the verifiers deem the implementations equivalent the spec is considered strong, otherwise it is iteratively refined. Evaluating AfterVibe on 72 real-world vibe-coded projects from a company's internal coding sessions, we find that its recovered specs are abstract by design-capturing behavioral intent without dictating implementation-yet strong. Multiple independent regenerations achieve a high mean regeneration score of 5.06 out of 6.0 while remaining diverse in their details, confirming that the spec constrains what without over-prescribing how. Besides outperforming existing human-authored descriptions, the specs can be further strengthened iteratively to a score of 5.74. A practical implication is that specifications-not code-could become the primary artifact for human review and the source of record at a time when AI-generated code is outpacing customary code review. References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer What is the Explorer? https://info.arxiv.org/labs/showcase.html arxiv-bibliographic-explorer Connected Papers What is Connected Papers? https://www.connectedpapers.com/about Litmaps What is Litmaps? https://www.litmaps.co/ scite Smart Citations What are Smart Citations? https://www.scite.ai/ Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv What is alphaXiv? https://alphaxiv.org/ CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers What is CatalyzeX? https://www.catalyzex.com DagsHub What is DagsHub? https://dagshub.com/ Gotit.pub What is GotitPub? http://gotit.pub/faq Hugging Face What is Huggingface? https://huggingface.co/huggingface ScienceCast What is ScienceCast? https://sciencecast.org/welcome Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower What are Influence Flowers? https://influencemap.cmlab.dev/ CORE Recommender What is CORE? https://core.ac.uk/services/recommender arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs https://info.arxiv.org/labs/index.html .