If you haven't come across the term, "vibe coding" is what people mean when they use an AI tool to build something by describing what they want in plain English, rather than writing the code themselves. It has opened the door for a lot of people who always fancied having a go at building something, and honestly, it's brilliant. You can play, experiment, and get something working surprisingly quickly.
We're big fans of it as a way to bring ideas to life. The trouble starts when vibe coding stops being play and becomes something you depend on.
The problem isn't the tool, it's where you point it
Every so often, a brand will make vibe coded changes to their live site without flagging it first. If you want to get hands on with your own site, that's completely fine, and we'd encourage it. The only thing that trips people up is doing it in the background, with no conversation.
Once AI generated code is live and something breaks, it can be tricky to untangle. If a bug appears and it isn't clear whether it came from our work or from a change made with an AI tool, it gets harder for us to support you quickly, and that's the last thing anyone wants when a store isn't working properly.
Why brands do it anyway
It's almost always about cost, and we completely understand why. If we've quoted for a piece of work the traditional way and the number feels big, the temptation to think "I'll just get an AI tool to do this myself" is entirely reasonable. In a small, contained way, that can be absolutely fine.
The catch is what it costs you later. AI is very good at producing something that works today. It's less good at producing something clean, consistent and easy to build on. Do enough of it without a plan and you slowly accumulate what we'd call bloat: layers of messy, patched-together code that get harder and harder to maintain. If we're then asked to come in and fix it, untangling all of that can end up being a bigger job than the original piece of work would have been.
Worth knowing too: Shopify has leaned into this, building more tools that let brands do their own vibe coding directly in the platform. So this is only going to become more common, not less.
A simple rule of thumb
The honest guidance is about where you point it. If you want to spin up a new hero banner on your homepage, create some fresh assets, or try out a design idea, go for it. That's low risk and genuinely useful.
Where we'd urge caution is anything that plugs into the rest of your store: an integration, an app, anything touching your data or your checkout. That's where a quick win can turn into a slow, expensive problem, and it's exactly the sort of thing we'd rather help you do properly from the start.
None of this is about gatekeeping. If you're keen to build things yourself, brilliant. We'd just rather help you do it in a way that won't come back to bite you.
If you've been experimenting and you're not sure whether something's safe to keep, send it our way and we'll take a look.
I lead our development team on wide range of projects - from Magento 2 storefronts using Hyvä, to bespoke Shopify builds and fully custom headless applications. I’m passionate about combining clean code with thoughtful design to create seamless user experiences and scalable digital products.
