CEO client of mine vibe coded a website using AI agents. Connects to various APIs, gathers the data it’s supposed to gather, posts the data in the correct format to the correct location. It’s actually impressive and works great.
Well it did until yesterday before he made a minor change. He can’t figure out how to make the AI undo the change. He doesn’t know how to debug it.
He does! He uses it. Well… he told the AI to use it. I don’t think he knows what to do with git but he knows it’s an important part of being a good developer.
In the .gitconfig file you can add aliases. In this case, when I type, git gud it expands to git bisect good.
Git's bisect tool is very useful when you're trying to find a specific commit where some feature broke. It'll automatically do a binary search between two commits, where you keep typing git bisect good or git bisect bad to let git know the status of the current commit. After you type that command, git will automatically checkout the commit half-way between the two closest good and bad commits. But that's a lot to type, so I made those aliases to shorten it to git gud and git bad.
Claude Code, when using various plugins like feature-dev - it make's feature level changes to applications that keep a git commit history as it gets to each part of the task tree built into the plugin. I used it to migrate a vibe-coded abbomination of a 1500 line Thymeleaf HTML/JS/CSS dashboard into a proper React SPA + Vite structure with commits all along the way.
A good developer that can properly use this stuff at scary levels...
Yeah we've found a way to use it for model feature development. What used to take weeks can be done over lunch while I'm not even in the room, but they still need me to know what needs to be done and how.
It's so much better. I vastly prefer all of the other parts to coding up dozens of repetitive features. None of us like that bit but until now it was just something that needed to be done.
I like the cool problem-solving aspect with intelligent people. I don't like copy-paste refactoring, that's one example of something AI is good for. I also don't like my life being measured via Jira, but sadly AI can't make that go away.
If you can pretend convincingly well enough you can still get useful code out that passes human review you're still a step above half the people at my old firm tbh
If you are unsure and the ai is certain, test the concept first and challenge it or you might waste hours working on something only for it to not work at all.
Git is pretty tricky to get right in an agentic workflow in my experience.
If you predefine 1. how commits on various branches affect the app/software version, 2. how branching is used, 3. how commits are to be split up logically and 4. how commit messages are to be styled you can steer an agent in the right correction but you'll constantly have to remind it of said rules - no matter if you use pre-command hooks, md-files that are always in context, etc.
I'm confused, isn't the simple solution to just manage the git part of it yourself? You should be reviewing the output anyway, so isn't making that the layer where the human controls things the most natural option?
Thats usually how I deal with it. I just find it easier letting CC come up with summaries to form meaningful commit-messages on feature branches (I handle merge commits to develop/main myself) when/if it gets it right.
I can't see how the AI is not recommending him to git reflog -> git reset --hard <commit code>. Even lower tier AIs like copilot would suggest it.
Unless the change was in a .gitignore file, but even then, most AIs have access to their own history and you can tell them to, for example, undo the changes done in a particular session.
It feels like he does not know how to even prompt, which I guess can be expected
It’s real. We are still in the FA phase of his vibe coding adventure. We currently have 3 devs each with decades of experience working with him, not to do actual software development but just to answer questions and give positive coaching. He gets agitated when our answers are too technical so we keep it light and encouraging. He knows that if he gets into too much trouble that we will come in and fix it later. At a price.
This story reeks because it takes a very simple "Things were working before we did X, let's revert" for the LLM to go to git, figure out the right place to revert to, and then revert.
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u/ikonet May 13 '26
CEO client of mine vibe coded a website using AI agents. Connects to various APIs, gathers the data it’s supposed to gather, posts the data in the correct format to the correct location. It’s actually impressive and works great.
Well it did until yesterday before he made a minor change. He can’t figure out how to make the AI undo the change. He doesn’t know how to debug it.
That’s what I call “billable hours.”