--- title: Why you can't vibe code real software | daily.dev description: A video transcript arguing that AI-assisted 'vibe coding' is fundamentally unsuitable for infrastructure and reliability engineering. The core argument is that... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-you-can-t-vibe-code-real-software-7j6pvdbed twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why you can't vibe code real software | daily.dev og:description: A video transcript arguing that AI-assisted 'vibe coding' is fundamentally unsuitable for infrastructure and reliability engineering. The core argument is that... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-you-can-t-vibe-code-real-software-7j6pvdbed og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/7j6pvdbed.png og:image:alt: Why you can't vibe code real software og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why you can't vibe code real software **[bigboxSWE](https://daily.dev/sources/bigboxswe)** · 4 min read · 108 upvotes · 15 comments ## Summary A video transcript arguing that AI-assisted 'vibe coding' is fundamentally unsuitable for infrastructure and reliability engineering. The core argument is that UI features have tight feedback loops (caught in dev or tests), but infrastructure failures manifest as multi-hour production outages with no clear root cause. Recent real-world outages (Grok uploading git repos, Railway losing Google Cloud API access, COD outage without postmortem) are cited as evidence that infrastructure complexity cannot be automated away. The piece recommends learning SRE fundamentals via Google's SRE handbooks, Boot.dev's DevOps course, and self-hosting projects. Sponsored by WorkOS for enterprise authentication. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why did Railway have an outage recently? Railway's cloud infrastructure relies on Google's cloud API to populate its routing tables, and Google abruptly disabled Railway's access without prior email notification, causing an outage that lasted almost a full day. The incident wasn't caused by any fault in Railway's own code or infrastructure decisions. _Anyone depending on third-party cloud APIs for critical infra can follow incidents like this via daily.dev to spot dependency risks early._ ### What happened with Grok uploading git repos to the cloud? Grok, the AI platform associated with Elon Musk, was found uploading entire git repositories to its cloud infrastructure. This wasn't described as intentional data harvesting but rather a poor infrastructure engineering decision by the team responsible for handling repository data. _Engineers evaluating AI platform trustworthiness can track incidents like this on daily.dev before integrating third-party tools._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@baz14** · 6 upvotes > Coder is a junior who knows the syntax of one language and the API of a couple of libs/services. But to advance their career, they also need to begin immersing themselves in fundamental knowledge. AI is currently aiming to fill this niche. And yes, it comes preloaded with syntax documentation for virtually all known languages and libraries. > > Software engineer identifies a problem and assembles the architecture of the entire stack to address it. They implement the necessary algorithms and patterns for the codebase, databases, security systems, control, monitoring, and deployment. And at the... **@hemna** · 3 upvotes > But I have already and am selling it. **@borderbabe2412** · 1 upvotes > but that is why there are companies like replit and rantir emerging **@ahmetozel** · 1 upvotes > The infrastructure angle is the sharper version of this. Vibe coding shines where the feedback loop is tight — the code compiles and passes the test, or it doesn't. Infra failure is the opposite: it shows up hours later as a multi-service outage with no clean stack trace, and the fix depends on context that was never in the prompt. A model can scaffold a Terraform file; it can't hold the model of how your VPC, IAM, and retry budgets interact under load. That's the 20% you can't automate away — not because it's hard to type, but because it's hard to reason about, and the failure signal arrives... ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [“You can't vibe code scale”: What the AI hype gets wrong about software engineering](https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-t-vibe-code-scale-what-the-ai-hype-gets-wrong-about-software-engineering-rrqmusgve) · Stack Overflow Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Self-hosted app abandonment is speeding up, and it's reaching projects people trust](https://daily.dev/posts/self-hosted-app-abandonment-is-speeding-up-and-it-s-reaching-projects-people-trust-kcu4psdaa) · XDA Developers · 11 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/infrastructure), [#authentication](https://daily.dev/tags/authentication), [#vibe-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/vibe-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-you-can-t-vibe-code-real-software-7j6pvdbed) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why you can't vibe code real software","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-you-can-t-vibe-code-real-software-7j6pvdbed","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-you-can-t-vibe-code-real-software-7j6pvdbed"},"datePublished":"2026-07-17T13:43:52.790Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T18:39:59.863Z","description":"A video transcript arguing that AI-assisted 'vibe coding' is fundamentally unsuitable for infrastructure and reliability engineering. 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And yes, it comes preloaded with syntax documentation for virtually all known languages and libraries.\nSoftware engineer identifies a problem and assembles the architecture of the entire stack to address it. They implement the necessary algorithms and patterns for the codebase, databases, security systems, control, monitoring, and deployment. And at the lowest level -writing code, scripts, db queries, tests, docs.\nAI can be a powerful tool at each stage, but it can’t do all this without orchestration and verification of results.","datePublished":"2026-07-18T07:09:18.581Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/7j6pvdbed#c-4B3pH25TM","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Baz","url":"https://daily.dev/baz14","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocKd2iFU8YS4sV-rBJptuYSF8EHeQnm23N_dcXE1uON7_GMIlZg=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":6}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"But I have already and am selling it.","datePublished":"2026-07-18T03:24:45.545Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/7j6pvdbed#c-SAGxLE3V5","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Chewbacca","url":"https://daily.dev/hemna","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/672207?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"but that is why there are companies like replit and rantir emerging","datePublished":"2026-07-18T19:38:25.234Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/7j6pvdbed#c-wPRsW19bd","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"tayler freund","url":"https://daily.dev/borderbabe2412","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/AAcHTtec3ubtN2G-Ydx9ha0JaOD_n9qMXsD1_wZdqDGOaX6Pvw=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"The infrastructure angle is the sharper version of this. Vibe coding shines where the feedback loop is tight — the code compiles and passes the test, or it doesn’t. Infra failure is the opposite: it shows up hours later as a multi-service outage with no clean stack trace, and the fix depends on context that was never in the prompt. A model can scaffold a Terraform file; it can’t hold the model of how your VPC, IAM, and retry budgets interact under load. That’s the 20% you can’t automate away — not because it’s hard to type, but because it’s hard to reason about, and the failure signal arrives too late to vibe your way through it.","datePublished":"2026-07-21T06:00:49.712Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/7j6pvdbed#c-MEfwyKwrz","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Ahmet Özel","url":"https://daily.dev/ahmetozel","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/70992231?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-you-can-t-vibe-code-real-software-7j6pvdbed#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did Railway have an outage recently?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Railway's cloud infrastructure relies on Google's cloud API to populate its routing tables, and Google abruptly disabled Railway's access without prior email notification, causing an outage that lasted almost a full day. The incident wasn't caused by any fault in Railway's own code or infrastructure decisions. Anyone depending on third-party cloud APIs for critical infra can follow incidents like this via daily.dev to spot dependency risks early."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What happened with Grok uploading git repos to the cloud?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Grok, the AI platform associated with Elon Musk, was found uploading entire git repositories to its cloud infrastructure. This wasn't described as intentional data harvesting but rather a poor infrastructure engineering decision by the team responsible for handling repository data. Engineers evaluating AI platform trustworthiness can track incidents like this on daily.dev before integrating third-party tools."}}]} ```