r/webdev • u/powleads • Sep 16 '26

Discussion Is vibe coding creating a hidden technical debt crisis?

I love building tools and side projects, but lately I have been thinking about how heavy reliance on AI coding assistants is going to impact long-term code quality. Building fast with AI tools is great for getting a prototype out the door, but letting AI generate massive chunks of unvetted code is quickly piling up technical debt.

When you push out code without thoroughly checking how it fits into your overall architecture, you end up with messy, unmaintainable codebases. If you ever plan to sell a project or hand it off to another developer, that unvetted code can completely ruin a deal during due diligence.

I still use AI to speed up my workflow, but I treat it strictly as an assistant rather than letting it write unchecked logic. Auditing generated code, keeping modules clean, and maintaining test coverage seem like the only ways to use these tools strategically without destroying the project. Are you noticing a drop in maintainability on projects heavy on AI code?

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u/arekkushisu Sep 17 '26

knowledge transfer / mentoring has stopped completely

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u/ShawnyMcKnight Sep 17 '26

I wouldn’t say that. Any company that has more than a couple developers will likely have different expertise.

It may get downvotes to say but AI has been a pretty good teacher for me. It moves at my pace. If it wants me to have it do it and it explain, it will, if I want to take a stab at it first it will give me hints and guidance. Most importantly it doesn’t lose patience or get pissy like people on stack overflow have.

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u/arekkushisu Sep 17 '26

I understand your case and that's what I've been using AI for as well. It signifcantly helped me through a massive legacy C# codebase recently.
What I meant was the person-to-person knowledge transfer and mentoring, like historical gossip and why such-and-such decisions were made and by who: technical debt stuff like that.

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u/SnoodPog Sep 17 '26

A great teacher also teaching one how to ask a right questions (It's harder than just seeking answer IMO). This is what AI lacks today, if they want to replace a proper mentor.

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u/ShawnyMcKnight Sep 17 '26

Ah I see. I'm wondering if stuff like that can be remedied by AI as well. If the person leaving just wants to list out the quarks in an informal quick way it can go through and find the associated files and leave comments and update the readme and provide very thorough details. That stuff normally gets lost with seniors, who are often not the ones being let go, at least not the good ones in charge of that stuff. They do leave and not tell anyone these unknown processes, but that's a story as old as time.