Thinking of vibe coding an app for your small business?
With LLM coding tools taking the software development world by storm, it’s never been an easier time for small business owners throughout the Jersey Shore to consider using these tools to help create solutions that solve their digital friction. Services from Loveable, Bolt, Replit, Cursor, and others allow anyone to chat with AI to create working sites and apps.
Just think about it: an accessible way to try and resolve issues with your frustrating business software and systems, tailoring functionality to your business needs. Sounds like a surefire solution, right? Well, before diving in headfirst, take note that these tools have a very unique set of pitfalls to watch out for.
Common pitfalls when vibe-coding
1. Time and cost
On the surface, vibe coding software for your business may sound like an excellent way to save time and money. Except, non-developers tend to get stuck in what feels like an endless loop of debugging. That’s because most AI-generated code will contain some percentage of bugs, which is usually tolerable and fixable.
However, LLMs eventually lose context and begin to drift or hallucinate. When this happens, you’ll be burning through credits trying to understand cryptic error messages, or worse yet, wasting time sifting through unfamiliar files and concepts trying to connect all the dots instead of focusing on what really matters: your business and its competitive edge.
2. Security and scalability
Tools like these excel at rapid prototyping. But the problem with pushing a prototype into production without professional oversight is that it opens you up to vulnerabilities around security and scalability, even when the app appears secure and stable on the surface.
Meanwhile, under the hood, the AI-generated code can contain security vulnerabilities, publicly exposed sensitive data like API keys and database credentials, performance bottlenecks and code bloat, and lack of systems that promote scale like error handling and rate limiting. The list goes on and on.
3. Limited output and vague prompting
If you’ve already created a working prototype, you might be asking yourself why it has such a generic look and feel to it. The answer is in how LLMs have been trained, where the most common patterns, UI styles, and frameworks have a higher probability of being used. This then gives things a cookie-cutter, average, mediocre feel.
Compounding this notion is also how the model is prompted. Non-software developers are more likely to prompt an LLM ineffectively, unable to get an output that’s more desirable from both a visual design and functionality perspective as well as a software architectural perspective.
Know when to contact a professional
Successfully navigating these issues can yield an output that is pleasantly surprising. But a major core concern still remains: is the output actually production-ready that your business can rely upon, or is it still just a prototype without any professional oversight?
For non-software developers, this will be a very difficult question to answer.
Even if you have a vibe-coded prototype in hand that is in need of review and a refactor, you can rest assured that partnering with a software engineering professional will get you the results you need.
digitalshore.io is your Jersey Shore software engineering partner
With digitalshore.io, custom software solutions are designed and tailored to your exact business needs, bringing enterprise-level expertise directly to small businesses throughout the Jersey Shore area of Monmouth County, NJ.
When you work with digitalshore.io, you work directly with founder and principal engineer, John Foderaro, where you’ll gain access to his 15 years of professional experience in tech.
The very first step in getting started is to schedule your free, no-obligation, 15-minute introduction call to discuss your business and your current tech pain points. From there, a comprehensive tech audit and set of strategies can be developed to help get your business flowing.