{"slug": "vibe-coding-sucks-we-try-to-make-it-suck-less", "title": "Vibe coding sucks. We try to make it suck less.", "summary": "A developer building MergN aims to solve the visibility problem in AI-assisted coding by creating a visual workflow system that combines the determinism of no-code tools with the flexibility of code. The system allows non-developers to debug workflows by observing structure and flow rather than reading raw code.", "body_md": "“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”\n\n— Martin Fowler\n\nVibe coding feels incredible at first.\n\nYou describe what you want, AI writes it, and things move fast.\n\nUntil they don’t.\n\nThe moment your system grows beyond a simple prototype, things start to break in ways that are hard to trace. Edge cases appear as scattered fixes. Behavior becomes implicit instead of explicit. And suddenly you’re staring at a broken workflow and a $158 Claude bill wondering what actually went wrong.\n\nThe core issue isn’t speed.\n\nIt’s visibility.\n\nIf non-developers are expected to build systems with AI, they also need to understand what those systems are actually doing when something fails. Not by reading code, but by observing structure, flow, and execution in a way that makes debugging possible.\n\nThis is where visual automation tools like n8n, Zapier, and Make solve part of the problem.\n\nThey introduce determinism.\n\nA workflow becomes a graph. A graph becomes readable. Even non-developers can follow what happens step by step. Green means it’s working, red means something broke.\n\nBut they hit a ceiling fast.\n\nBecause flexibility still lives in code.\n\nThe moment you need complex logic, dynamic behavior, or custom integrations, you either:\n\nbend the tool until it breaks\n\nor leave it entirely and go back to code\n\nAnd then you end up in a worse state: half visual system, half codebase, full complexity.\n\nYou’re forced to learn the tool and write code at the same time, without a clear boundary between what is configurable and what is programmable.\n\nSo the real question becomes:\n\nWhat does a system look like that is both deterministic and flexible?\n\nThat is the gap we’re trying to solve with MergN.\n\nMergN is a visual workflow system where behavior, logic, and integrations are generated and extended at runtime using AI.\n\nWorkflows stay graphable and traceable, but instead of being limited to predefined blocks, nodes can express dynamic behavior without losing observability.\n\nSo you get:\n\nthe structure of no-code tools\n\nthe flexibility of code\n\nand the visibility of a system you can actually debug\n\nNot by reading raw code.\n\nBut by understanding the graph that represents it.\n\nWebsite: [https://mergn.quollhq.com](https://mergn.quollhq.com)\n\nSource: [https://github.com/mergn-app/MergN](https://github.com/mergn-app/MergN)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-coding-sucks-we-try-to-make-it-suck-less", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/2o77/vibe-coding-sucks-we-try-to-make-it-suck-less-4o74", "published_at": "2026-06-20 13:15:55+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-20 14:06:35.275035+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-tools", "generative-ai", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["MergN", "n8n", "Zapier", "Make", "Claude", "Martin Fowler"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-coding-sucks-we-try-to-make-it-suck-less", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-coding-sucks-we-try-to-make-it-suck-less.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-coding-sucks-we-try-to-make-it-suck-less.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-coding-sucks-we-try-to-make-it-suck-less.jsonld"}}