Vibe coding is a superpower for speed but a trap for quality if you're lazy. Here's the honest breakdown of the pros, cons, and when to avoid it.

It's neither—it's a tool. Asking if vibe coding is "good" is like asking if a nail gun is good. In the hands of a carpenter, it builds a house in half the time. In the hands of a toddler, it's a disaster.

Here is the honest, engineering-focused breakdown.

The Good (Speed & Access)

Velocity: You can ship an MVP in a weekend. This isn't marketing hype; it's real.
Unblocking: Stuck on a complex regex or a generic CSS grid layout? AI solves it in seconds, keeping you in the flow.
Learning: Reading AI-generated code (if it's good) can teach you patterns you didn't know existed.

The Bad (The "Spaghetti" Trap)

If you blindly accept every suggestion from the AI, your codebase will rot.

Inconsistent Patterns: One file uses axios, another uses fetch. One uses Tailwind, another uses inline styles. AI lacks long-term memory of your whole project unless you enforce it.
Subtle Bugs: AI loves to hallucinate variables that almost exist.
Security Risks: It might happily generate a SQL query directly in a client component if you don't correct it.

When to Vibe Code (and When Not To)

Vibe Code This ✅	Write This Yourself 🛑
UI Components (Cards, Buttons, Layouts)	Core Business Logic (Pricing tier calculations)
Boilerplate (CRUD API routes, Forms)	Auth & Security (RBAC, Token handling)
Tests (Unit tests, Mock data generation)	Complex Algorithms (Data processing pipelines)
Refactoring (Renaming props, sorting imports)	Database Schema Design