{"slug": "the-hardest-part-of-vibe-coding-isn-t-building-the-app", "title": "The hardest part of vibe coding isn't building the app", "summary": "A developer building Shipsure, a tool for adding visibility to AI-built applications, argues that the hardest part of vibe coding is not building the app but debugging it when it quietly goes wrong in production. The developer notes that while AI coding tools like Claude, Codex, and Cursor enable rapid app creation, they do not improve the ability to detect subtle failures, such as an API returning unexpected data or an AI-generated function misbehaving under specific conditions. Shipsure aims to provide a layer of visibility to help developers quickly understand what went wrong in their AI-built apps.", "body_md": "I've been thinking about this a lot lately.\n\nWith *Claude, Codex, Cursor, etc.*, I can get an app from an idea to something working *ridiculously quickly*.\n\nAnd honestly, that's great.\n\nBut then comes the part that isn't as fun.\n\nYou put it in front of actual users.\n\nSomeone does something you didn't think of.\n\nAn API returns something weird.\n\nA background job fails.\n\nA user creates an account and the account doesn't get added.\n\nAn AI-generated function technically works, but under one specific condition it does the completely wrong thing.\n\nAnd suddenly you're spending more time figuring out what actually happened than *fixing the problem*.\n\nThat's the bit I think we're going to underestimate with vibe coding.\n\nWe're getting much better at creating software.\n\nWe're not necessarily getting better at knowing when the software is quietly going wrong.\n\nThat's why I've been building [Shipsure](https://shipsure.space/).\n\nThe idea is to give AI-built apps another layer of visibility around the stuff that tends to go wrong once they're actually being used.\n\nNot another AI coding agent.\n\nNot another \"paste your error into AI\" tool.\n\nMore like:\n\nYour app broke. Here's exactly what happened.\n\nI'm still figuring out what the product should become, so I'm genuinely curious about this:\n\nWhat's the most annoying bug you've had in an AI-built app that took way longer to find than it should have?\n\nNot the biggest bug.\n\nThe stupid one.\n\nThe one where you eventually found it and thought \"there is absolutely no reason this took me 3 hours.\"\n\nThose are the problems I'm interested in.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hardest-part-of-vibe-coding-isn-t-building-the-app", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/webppers/the-hardest-part-of-vibe-coding-isnt-building-the-app-1l7b", "published_at": "2026-08-19 10:36:49+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-19 10:42:08.546401+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Shipsure", "Claude", "Codex", "Cursor"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hardest-part-of-vibe-coding-isn-t-building-the-app", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hardest-part-of-vibe-coding-isn-t-building-the-app.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hardest-part-of-vibe-coding-isn-t-building-the-app.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hardest-part-of-vibe-coding-isn-t-building-the-app.jsonld"}}