Beyond Vibe Coding

Chapter 8. Security, Maintainability, and Reliability

This chapter confronts a critical aspect of vibe coding and AI-assisted engineering—ensuring that the code you produce with AI assistance is secure, reliable, and maintainable. Speed and productivity mean little if the resulting software is riddled with vulnerabilities or prone to crashing.

First, I’ll examine common security pitfalls that arise in AI-generated code, from injection vulnerabilities to secrets leakage. You’ll learn techniques for auditing and reviewing AI-written code for such issues, effectively acting as the security safety net for your AI pair programmer.

Next, I’ll discuss building effective testing and QA frameworks around AI-generated code to catch bugs and reliability issues early. Performance considerations will also be covered. AI might write correct code, but it’s not always the most efficient code, so I’ll outline how to identify and optimize performance bottlenecks. I’ll also explore strategies to ensure maintainability, such as enforcing consistent styles or refactoring AI code, since AI suggestions can sometimes be inconsistent or overly verbose.

I’ll show you how to adapt your code-review practices to an AI-assisted workflow, highlighting what human reviewers should focus on when reviewing code that was partially or wholly machine-generated. Finally, I’ll round up best practices for deploying AI-assisted projects with confidence, from continuous integration pipelines to monitoring in production. ...