It's 12:45 PM, and my morning has vanished into the black hole of debugging my vibe-coded meme stock valuation site. The monthly growth numbers are spitting out garbage. What should be a steady 3-5% is showing wild swings between -50% and +2000%; the numbers don't add up.
Each fix attempt means a 3-5 minute wait for Claude Code, get distracted, and come back to find that some code was added, but the bug remains.
To fix this bug, I need to understand the code. However, the code is a mess of duplicates and dead ends, and I’m losing motivation just looking at it.
Frustrated, I decided to give Claude the honor of simplifying this chaos; maybe then I’ll be able to understand what’s happening and fix it myself. While it did successfully simplify some of the code, it also removed one of the application's features.
I embraced defeat, killed the feature, and swore to never think about it again. This is true vibe debugging hell.
Where Things Went Wrong
There are obvious ways to mitigate the need to vibe debug:
Provide the full specification upfront.
Let the agent ask clarifying questions.
Review every change and reject code you don't understand.
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