Taming Vibe Coding - Riding Herd on an Unruly AI Side‑kick
Picture a dusty street at high noon. Your new AI agent swaggers out of the saloon, promising to draw boilerplate quicker than Wyatt Earp can spin a six‑shooter. Two minutes later it claims seven times eight is fifty‑four and insists that Array.prototype.last() shipped in 2015. The tumbleweed pauses, the piano stops, and someone mutters, "This town isn't big enough for hallucinations and the truth."
That, in a nutshell, is the paradox of vibe coding with modern AI. We hired the machine to fetch the coffee and sweep the porch. Instead, we've promoted ourselves to sheriff, forever checking whether our deputy has accidentally pistol‑whipped the type system.
The OK Corral of Hype and Reality
When chat assistants first rode into camp they looked like tireless ranch hands:
- Spinning up scaffolds at dawn
- Summarising RFCs nobody fancied reading
- Spitting out unit‑test stubs while the kettle boiled
They do all that, and they do it fast. Then they mis‑name an import, invent an API, and swear black is white faster than you can say "caught red‑handed".
The sting in the tail: judging the output quietly demands you already know the territory. Junior devs hesitate to merge AI code without supervision; seniors now spend evenings as code‑wranglers. We traded one chore for another.
Mustering the posse
| Badge | What it shoots down |
|---|---|
| TypeScript | Static types keep the herd inside the corral. If the code claims a string is a number, the compiler hollers before the first shot is fired. |
| ESLint | Codifies house rules. Mis‑spelt hooks and side effects end up in the county gaol. |
| Prettier | Settles bar‑room quarrels over tabs and semicolons so people notice real trouble. |
| Vitest & Playwright | Nail the spec to the saloon wall. Failures smell the smoke before the blaze spreads. |
| Nx | Fence off packages like cattle pens, so a rogue import can't wander where it pleases. |
| GitHub Actions | The railway guard. Nothing boards the main branch unless every check tips its hat. |
Individually these tools are trusty deputies. Together they form a cordon that keeps the whole frontier safe.
A trail‑guide for safer AI sessions
-
Prompt narrow, review wide
Ask for a single pure function, not a whole ranch. Smaller outputs are easier to corral and simpler to type‑check. -
Anchor with real types
Paste genuine interfaces into the prompt. The agent is less likely to improvise new fields when the map is already laid out. -
Scaffold, then refactor
Treat the reply as a first draft. Run ESLint and Prettier, fold the result into your codebase, and refactor immediately. Early fingerprints discourage colleagues from assuming the AI is gospel. -
Write tests first
Pin the wanted poster on the wall before the outlaw arrives. Test‑driven development still works when your partner is a robot. -
Let CI stand guard
Fail fast in the pipeline: type errors, snapshot diffs, coverage drops. If the pull request can't clear the table, it never reaches production.
Nx: the chuck‑wagon that's already packed
If wrangling every tool by hand feels like pitching tents at midnight, start your project with Nx. One scaffold command and the workspace rides out with TypeScript, ESLint, Prettier, Vitest, Playwright and a CI pipeline already hitched to the wagon. Default boundaries keep libraries apart, tags tell the linter who can talk to whom, and cached builds mean the whole posse moves quicker. In short, most of the graft lands in the chuck‑wagon with zero extra effort from you. And here's a slick trick: you can even use Copilot's fetch capabilities to help round up those setup commands faster than a tumbleweed in a dust storm.
The road ahead
AI isn't the first temperamental bandit we've faced. Remember CSS before Flexbox? We survived with tooling, discipline, and a stubborn streak. Cinch up TypeScript, tighten your ESLint presets, and keep the test runner humming. Do that and hallucinations fade into background hiss, annoying yet far from fatal.
As Doc Holliday drawled, "I'm your daisy." Just be sure to read the diff before you tip your hat and ride into the sunset.
FAQs
Q: How do I maintain quality when using AI-generated code?
A: Implement a robust tooling stack (TypeScript, ESLint, Prettier, tests) and review all AI output carefully. Keep prompts focused on small, specific tasks and validate against your existing codebase.
Q: What's the best way to integrate AI into a team workflow?
A: Establish clear guidelines for AI usage, maintain strong CI/CD practices, and ensure all AI-generated code goes through the same review process as human-written code. Document your prompt patterns and validation steps.
Q: How can junior developers safely use AI coding tools?
A: Start with small, well-defined tasks. Have seniors review AI-generated code and help identify common pitfalls. Use TypeScript and testing to catch issues early, and maintain a "trust but verify" mindset.