Has AI "Vibe Coding" Killed No‑Code Development?

The rise of vibe coding in 2025

“Vibe coding”, a.k.a giving an AI a high‑level instruction and letting it scaffold an entire project, is taking the world (and especially LinkedIn) by storm. Platforms such as Replit, Lovable, Bolt and Cursor now let anyone spin up a working prototype in a browser with little more than plain‑language prompts.

For the past decade I've helped businesses big and small design, build and launch apps. Before stepping away from DreamWalk a couple of months ago, I witnessed a sudden and significant shift in what early stage startups were trying, with more and more founders walking into our studio brandishing around AI‑generated code.

The excitement is real and the speed is breathtaking, but the cracks show quickly...

Where pure vibe coding falls short

• Prompt‑only interface - Micro‑tweaks to layouts or logic often require another vague prompt and a roll of the dice. A five‑minute visual adjustment can balloon into a thirty‑minute back‑and‑forth.rth.

• Bug whack‑a‑mole - Fixing one issue regularly spawns another because the model lacks full project context and can overwrite working code.

• Security blind spots - AI tools routinely expose secrets in the front end or skip basic hardening. I have seen production API keys left in public JavaScript and user‑uploaded images stored locally instead of on S3.

• Unknown scalability - The generated stack may ignore caching, compression or background workers, leading to bloated apps that fall over when traffic spikes.

• Technical debt on day one - Inconsistent code style and unnecessary dependencies create maintenance headaches and slow future development.

A recent marketplace project illustrates the danger. The founder “vibed” an 80 per cent‑complete product in two weeks. It looked slick, and included the majority of the key functionality, but every uploaded image was a multi‑megabyte blob sitting on the same server and a single attempted bug fix in one area of the app broke something in another part of the app. Our team somewhat begrudgingly worked with the code to get it into a better state, ready for launch, but it took considerable effort and therefore still required a significant cash investment from the founder.

Does that mean I'm about to be cancelled for calling AI coding a farce? Hopefully not! I'm going somewhere with this...

Remember no-code and low-code platforms? Well, they've just been through a re-brand and now we call them "Visual Development" platforms. Most importantly, they've just become significantly more powerful, with the integration of AI.

AI inside the Visual Development editor

Modern visual development platforms keep the drag‑and‑drop ease of traditional no‑code while weaving AI into the workflow. Some examples include:

• Xano AI Assistants - draft databases, write SQL and integrate third party APIs with a simple prompt.

• WeWeb AI - create UI, workflows and even Supabase backends directly in the canvas.

• FlutterFlow Figma Import - import a Figma file and watch the tool generate pixel‑perfect screens and components, then refine them visually.

Because the structure is rendered side‑by‑side with the AI, you can immediately nudge spacing, rename a field or add auth rules within the confines of the platform's structure and without risking the rest of the app.

Why AI + Visual Development beats AI‑only "Vibe Coding"

1. Iterate at design speed - drag a handle, change copy, rearrange components or update logic visually. No waiting on another prompt.

2. Stay in control of data and security - visual databases expose every column, validation rule and permission, so nothing is hidden in a black‑box script.

3. Debug visually - if something breaks you follow the workflow diagram, not auto-generated spaghetti.

4. Own the code - many platforms now offer export or self‑host options, so you are not locked into one AI runtime.

My new workflow is becoming more like this: prompt the AI for a first draft, then fine‑tune in a visual editor. The result feels like pair‑programming with a tireless junior dev while I stay in complete control.

The road ahead

I do not believe vibe coding has killed no‑code – it has made the value of visual development clearer. The future is a blended stack:

• AI to accelerate - sketches screens, scaffolds tables, writes boilerplate.

• Visual development to perfect - polishes the experience, ensures quality and keeps non‑technical founders inside their comfort zone.

• Exportable code for longevity – deploy anywhere, audit as needed. Many no-code / low code platforms are still resisting this one, but I think eventually it will need to happen for people to be truly comfortable adopting visual development.

If this approach resonates with you, check out my App Bootcamp where I teach founders to harness AI and visual development together so they can launch a secure, scalable MVP and keep iterating without hiring a dev agency.