Is it possible to build a long-term product through vibe coding?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
As an SAP ABAP Developer, I had app ideas sitting in my head for years. Before AI, the learning curve for mobile development felt impossibly steep. Now? I shipped my iOS app in weeks.
But here's my honest question:
How many of us vibe coders are actually building sustainable products?
I see countless apps being launched daily. Claude, Cursor, Copilot, Replit - they've democratized development in ways we couldn't imagine 2 years ago. Anyone can build an app now.
But there's a difference between:
Shipping an app
Building a product
Creating a business
My observations:
The build is the easy part now. Getting from idea to MVP used to take months. Now it takes days. That's incredible.
But products need more than code. They need marketing, user research, iteration, support, and most importantly - a deep understanding of the problem you're solving.
Vibe coding might create a false sense of expertise. I can prompt my way to a working app, but do I truly understand what I built? Can I maintain it? Scale it?
The competition just got 10x harder. If everyone can build, what differentiates a successful product?
I'm genuinely curious:
Have you shipped something via vibe coding that became a real, sustainable product?
What happened after launch? Did you hit walls you couldn't prompt your way through?
Do you think the "build fast, ship fast" mentality actually works for long-term products?
I'm not being pessimistic - I'm excited about what I built. But I want a reality check from this community.
Are we building products or just apps?
Replies
Hello @gleedo This is a really solid reality check, not pessimism.
My take: vibe coding is great for getting to truth faster, not for skipping fundamentals.
You’re right that the build is no longer the hard part. Shipping an app is almost table stakes now. The hard parts didn’t disappear — they just moved:
understanding users deeply
deciding what not to build
handling edge cases, reliability, support
distribution and trust
Where I’ve seen vibe-coded projects turn into real products, a few things were consistent:
the founder already understood the problem space (even if not the tech)
AI sped up execution, but decisions were still human
after launch, progress slowed down a lot — not because of code, but because of users
And yeah, you hit walls you can’t prompt your way through: product judgment, prioritization, saying no, owning long-term complexity.
So I don’t think vibe coding kills sustainable products. I think it kills the illusion that building was ever the moat.
The moat is still:
insight
taste
distribution
persistence
Vibe coding gets you to the starting line faster. What happens after that still decides whether you’re building a product… or just another app.
I created the MVP for my skill exchange platform (Swapster) using Replit. I rather wait a year or two to call it a sustainable biz haha, it's pretty young.
What I think, now is more easy to show prototypes & MVPs. It's also cheaper. 10 years ago, I would had had to raise capital just to create what I did on Replit -alone, being not technical. That's a tremendous advantage. Yes, the technical debt is gonna be higher, and yes, is preferable to have the site checked by a CTO... but what moves the needle is all the rest of stuff you mentioned, mainly all around GTM and growth.
A huge barrier disappeared -fortunately for the most of us. Maybe not sustainable in the long run -maybe yes, but good enough to prove a point and solve a problem 😁
@daylen_m really good point but i'm not quite sure if the barrier disappeared or moved further.
It was difficult to create a MVP back then, it's difficult to maintain a community at the moment because there are at least hundreds of app which is very similar to yours.
Honestly, i think it's good that some phases are still difficult. But coding is almost not a skill anymore, i wonder what it'll bring in the future :)
I'm in a similar boat - zero coding background, built a full iOS/Android app (SelfOS, life planner) entirely with Claude Code. Live on both stores, real users, paying subscribers. So... is it sustainable? Honestly, I'm still finding out.
What I've learned so far - the "why" behind bugs. AI can fix a bug, but when something breaks in production with real users, understanding the root cause matters. I've started doing regular "audit sessions" where I ask Claude to scan for potential issues - it helps, but it's not the same as truly knowing your codebase.
What actually works:
Build one tiny thing at a time. Test. Ship. Repeat.
Treat AI like a very fast junior dev who needs clear instructions and constant supervision.
Accept that your code will be messy. Schedule cleanup sessions.
I think we're building products, not just apps - but only if we treat vibe coding as a tool, not a substitute for product thinking.
The code is the easy part now. Everything else is still hard. Maybe that's the point.