The rise of vibe coding: how small teams can use it safely.

AI has become very good at turning plain English into working pages and small apps. All you need to do is describe what you want, and it'll build something on a first pass. It can feel like a magical experience when you do it for the first time... however, if you're not careful with what you're asking for it can be a long, painful experience that kills the vibe. Sure, you can ship something in an afternoon, but you can also ship little mistakes that only show up when customers start clicking around.

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One stat that's wild... in the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 84% of respondents say they use or plan to use AI tools, and 51% of professional developers use them daily. However... most professionals don't trust what AI is spitting out on a first pass, which is why a second opinion matters when you're creating a website or app. Here’s how you can keep the speed of vibe coding without the headaches that may come along with it.

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What exactly is “vibe coding?”

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The term itself caught fire in 2025, popularized by Andrej Karpathy and quickly picked up by everyone else across LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter (X). Vibe coding is essentially building by prompts and conversation. You tell an AI what you’re trying to do ("I need a one page site with a lead form and a thank you email"), and it writes the code for you. You continue giving it instructions, and it continues refining what it's created. It’s not “no code” per se since there’s real code under the hood... and all you’re doing is steering the wheel and hoping you navigate it towards your ideal outcome.

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What does vibe coding look like in real life?

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The weekend landing page.

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‍A local bakery has three days to launch a preorder page for a seasonal box. They fire up an AI builder, answer a handful of questions, tweak copy and colors, and connect a simple form so people can reserve a box.

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A few things they might miss: leads start landing in the wrong inbox, notifications get filtered to spam folders, or the layout is breaking on a mobile device. Considering how your website works on mobile is essential given that over half of mobile visitors bail if it takes 3 seconds or more to load your website according to Google... so quick image/script fixes here and there can save you money.

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Inbox sanity for a services business.

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A painting crew is drowning in scattered emails and DMs. They ask AI to pipe website inquiries into a shared spreadsheet and auto‑reply with next steps so nothing slips through the cracks.

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What may trip this team up: pasting API keys or customer details into prompts, wiring everything into a personal account instead of a shared company account, and user journeys that quietly fail on a mobile device. Make sure you're keeping API keys and important information out of chats, set up your workflows so notifications are going to a business email, and tap through the whole journey end to end so you know everything is working as expected.

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A trainer’s mini booking page.

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On the services side, a personal trainer wants one link for everything—scheduling, pricing, and a payment button. AI drafts the page and connects the payments gateway for the trainer.

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What's easy to overlook: It's standard practice to test your payments gateway before going live with your website. When you allow AI to set everything up, it's easy to miss which API key to use between testing and going live with your system. Also, it's crucial to run through a couple sample bookings to ensure both payments and scheduling are working as expected. Another thing to consider... it may be a security risk posting all these keys into AI chats in case somebody decided they wanted to hack your account.

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Store email in minutes.

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Over in retail, a boutique leans on its platform to draft a product‑launch email from their catalog, schedules everything for the weekend, and gets back to packing orders for their customers.

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Wait! Before you hit send: check unsubscribe and preference links, make sure your sending emails to the right audience segments, add alt text to your images so it doesn't hurt deliverability, and confirm your analytics are recording your open rates and clickthrough rates. Also, CAN‑SPAM requires honoring unsubscribes within 10 business days.

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AI builders... same vibe, but much different guardrails.

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AI website builders have exploded in the last year. Some of these builders include GoDaddy Airo, Wix AI, and Squarespace’s Blueprint. All you need to do is describe your business, pick the style you want, and the builder drafts a site that’s hosted and ready to go.

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It feels a lot like vibe coding since you’re steering the whole project with prompts and continual feedback. The key difference is guardrails: builders keep you inside a managed platform, while vibe coding is asking the AI to write scripts or app code that you deploy and maintain.

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Where teams often land is a mix of using AI builders and vibe coding. They start with an AI generated site, then vibe code “just one more thing” whether it's a price calculator, a custom form flow, a small inventory system, or something else. This is where little issues start piling up very quickly... now you're dealing with platform updates that overwrite custom code, forms that might leak data if they're not properly secured, API keys pasted into AI prompts, or plugins that are not working as expected between different devices.

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None of this means you shouldn’t use these tools. There's a lot of value that comes from having an AI scaffold everything for you. However, when you’re generating with AI, vibe coding, or doing both at once, it pays to get a second opinion from a professional that can spot some of these issues. For context, recent incidents include a Replit AI agent deleting a live database during a test and a Gemini CLI flaw that allowed hidden code execution/exfiltration. Both were later addressed, but serve as useful reminders to review everything and make sure you work in a sandbox before pushing things live.

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What you can safely vibe (most of the time).

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If you’re inside a hosted builder (GoDaddy Airo, Wix AI, Squarespace Blueprint) or you’re working in a sandbox environment, these are usually low‑risk ways to move fast:
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• Simple landing pages without payments or logins. Pages that are capturing interest, not processing money.
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• Copy, sections, and layout tweaks. Headlines, FAQs, galleries, testimonials, and pricing tables just to name a few.
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• Contact forms that email you and save to your platform inbox/CRM (after a quick test).
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• Light automations that don’t touch sensitive data, such as logging a lead to a spreadsheet.
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• Internal dashboards that read data rather than write or delete it.

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What probably needs a second look before you go live.

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When you’re stretching past the builder’s guardrails, or mixing a generated site with extra vibe‑coded features, we highly advise requesting a quick review. These items tend to carry more risk:

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• Anything with money or identity: checkouts, subscriptions, discounts, taxes, refunds, and logins.
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• Integrations that write or delete data: inventory syncs, CRM pushes, calendar or POS updates.
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• Background jobs or agents with file/database access, even on “small” sites.
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• SEO‑critical changes: redirects/canonicals, structured data, analytics tagging and consent.
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• Deliverability and compliance: email segments, unsub/preference links, and ADA/accessibility basics.

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A quick decision guide for your next project.

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If you’re testing an idea or building your first MVP, vibe coding is your friend. Keep it in a sandbox or subdomain while you sanity‑check the basics: does the form email you and save to your platform, do notifications arrive in the right places, and does everything read clean on a mobile? Once those boxes are ticked, turn backups on, add a short privacy note, and then start advertising your idea.

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For your main website or store, your builder’s AI can save hours, but we advise to publish from staging so you can review the important stuff before you go live. Make sure your analytics and consents are set up properly, set up your redirects and SEO settings, go over accessibility basics, and measure how fast your pages are. A short review before you go live is almost always cheaper than fixing bugs after you’ve promoted the page.

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And when something touches customer data or payments, never launch without a second opinion. Explore in test or sandbox mode first, then have someone check the real flow: checkouts, subscriptions and refunds, account changes, and any integration that writes to your CRM, POS, or inventory. Keep keys out of prompts, store secrets in the platform, and give each integration the minimum access it needs.

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Also... here's a quick two‑minute safety check for all projects: make sure your backups are on, work in a copied file/folder, keep API keys and secrets out of chats, go through every user flow on your mobile phone, and get a quick review of your project if it touches money or private information.

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Speaking of vibe coding... did you know?

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Nearly half of AI‑generated code contains security flaws. Veracode’s 2025 GenAI Code Security Report tested 100+ AI models across 80 coding tasks and found risky vulnerabilities in about 45% of outputs. That’s why anything touching payments or customer data deserves a quick second opinion before it goes live.

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How Empac can help with your next vibe coded project.

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If you have something live or almost there, start with a free check by us. We’ll look at your vibe‑coded site or app and focus on the few items most likely to break or cost you money.

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From there, we can handle the safety and security features: turn on real backups, set up a staging copy, sanity‑check forms and payments, and bring everything up to date.

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When you are ready to go live, we’ll put together a launch plan so you know what to test, who does what, and how to roll back if something misbehaves.

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Prefer ongoing support? We offer maintenance and care plans to keep things updated and backed up so you can focus on running your business.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Is vibe coding safe?

Yes, if you build in a sandbox, keep API keys and secrets out of prompts, and get a second opinion before launch. It turns risky when command prompts and tools touch live data, payments, or files without some form of guardrails.

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Are AI website builders the same as vibe coding?

They feel similar, but builders (GoDaddy Airo, Wix AI, Squarespace Blueprint) keep you inside a hosted, guard-railed platform. Full vibe coding creates code you run and maintain yourself.

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When should I use an AI website builder vs. vibe coding?

Use a builder for your main site, quick promos, and anything that benefits from templates and hosting. Reach for vibe coding when you need custom behavior or integrations, then schedule a quick review to go over everything before taking it live.

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Can I vibe code on top of a builder-generated site?

Yes, and lots of teams do. Just watch for platform updates overwriting custom code, forms that don’t actually save, and plugins that break on mobile. If you’re mixing both, get a second opinion from us before going live.

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Do developers actually use AI day to day?

Many do. The pros still review outputs, keep testing, and use backups. Treat AI as a fast assistant, not an autopilot.

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Summary

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Vibe coding helps small teams move from idea to live page quickly by describing what you want and letting AI draft the pieces. AI builders add helpful guardrails, while full vibe coding gives you more control and more responsibility. The sweet spot is speed with safety: prototype freely, but keep anything risky in your sandbox (and out of AI chat prompts), and always get a second opinion before you turn on payments or start advertising your pages. Always test your user flows on your mobile phone, and make sure forms, analytics, and backups are working as expected. If you mixed a builder site with vibe coded extras, or you handle customer data of any kind, make sure to schedule a quick review so everything is looking good for launch.

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Need a hand from us? Submit a request for a Free Website Check. We will show you what is working, what is risky, and provide some quick wins and fixes. If you're ready to get started today, feel free to drop us a line and we'll get started on making your vibe coded project become more than an idea text prompted to an AI.

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