Anyone else noticed the increase of Vibe coded plugins flooding the market?

[El°HYM]

I would say & maybe take closer a look at when this topic was originally posted. We already went past vibe coded or not and already reached the point; how much AI was involved, is it good, is it useful, is it secure to use; will there be any updates in the future?

For me it has become kind of hard to spot, or lets say also needs a closer look to really figure out whats going on. A few hints might be generic GUI, an AI generated Site and info text. Yet, then we been having these for some time now and certainly not all generic looking plugins are vibe coded. To be honest all of this kind of just made me letting go of picking up every new shiny or not so shiny plugin, or every decent looking freebie. Most of us will have enough of those by now anyway, I guess.

[noiseresearch]

How can one identify vibe coded software?

What are the telltale signs?

I think I can tell from the GUI of the product and the website of the developer. Quite often same-ish colours themes across different websites and products. And often the GUI seems unbalanced not well laid out. Making a good GUI is something AI can't cover that well or maybe plain lack of imagination on the vibe-coder side. Not sure. But yeah the GUI and website are my first indicators.

[jamcat]

First you have to define what "vibe coded" software is.

There is a very clear definition :

Vibe coding is a software development workflow where you describe your app, website, or feature in plain language.

It's well explained here :
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/vibe-coding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding

And what percentage of the software has to have been described in plain language for it to qualify as vibe coded?

[noiseresearch]

First you have to define what "vibe coded" software is.

There is a very clear definition :

Vibe coding is a software development workflow where you describe your app, website, or feature in plain language.

It's well explained here :
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/vibe-coding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding

And what percentage of the software has to have been described in plain language for it to qualify as vibe coded?

I do not think it's about any numbers. Let me quote a quote from that Wikipedia article

If an LLM wrote every line of your code, but you've reviewed, tested, and understood it all, that's not vibe coding in my book—that's using an LLM as a typing assistant.

So if you are almost clueless about what you are coding and you just prompt till you have a running plugin that's not a good practice in my view.

[legendCNCD]

Can we have list of identified vibe coded plugins. That'll sort 'em out.

[Tiles]

Sort out what? AI assisted coding has long become real.

[kerfuffle]

On the KVR new products page, if a new developer you've never heard of releases 5 products at once, chances are they are vibecoded. Even if there are several weeks between releases. No human developer is that quick.

[Funky40]

How can one identify vibe coded software?

What are the telltale signs?

I think I can tell from the GUI .......

Similar to me. Mainly: the ever same type of too small sized fonts in ever same bigger boxes.

Then: Same colour schemes ( quite good ones in fact for my taste). Ever sameish knobs......just the whole visual appearance.

But to be fair, it is possible to just use vibe coding for the GUI itself. There are such guys.

[jamcat]

See, here’s the problem with all this “vibe-coding” panic: In most software companies bigger than one or two people, there is a Technical Lead or Lead Software Engineer. This person will design the software conceptually, develop algorithms, logical flow, and describe features for the programmers to implement. A Lead Software Engineer may not even write a line of C++ code themselves, and might only “describe the software in plain language” to one or more code monkeys (programmers) to implement.

An algorithm, by the way, is a universal step-by-step description of a process. It is described in plain language. An algorithm is what gets turned into a C++ function by a coder.

So essentially, a vibe coder is a Lead Software Engineer, and the AI agent fills the role of the code monkey. AI coding tools are to the point where they are on par with a top-level programmer. And of course there have always been plenty of programmers writing code who are not top-level. That includes most indie developers.

So the issue with “vibe coders” really comes down to whether or not they actually have the skills necessary to be a Lead Software Engineer and logically design a piece of software inside and out and then communicate it clearly and methodically, not whether or not they can write their own C++ code.

Side note: a Technical Lead or Lead Software Engineer will typically review the submitted code, though that’s probably less important when a human coder with human error isn’t involved.

More importantly, software needs rigorous testing, both with unit testing and hands on beta testing. With AI assisted coding, more time should be spent testing than coding. That is one area of development that pure “vibe coders” without real-world software development experience may not fully grasp.

So to recap, the potential pitfalls of vibe coding isn’t going to be the code itself. That will be solid. It’s the soundness of the design and the thoroughness of the testing where things may fall apart.