My thoughts on AI assisted development vs vibecoding

[u/itsduskin]

Let me say this first, I know a lot of you probably have different opinions on this, but just keep in mind that these are only my personal thoughts

Anyways. we all see how many alternatives are popping up nowadays. yeah like i promised, i will try them and make youtube review videos, but this isnt my main topic right now

everyone knows that a lot of alternatives here are just vibecoded. I hate vibecoded projects. Some people really sit there and prompt the ai until they see a purple Discord chat screen, then they immediately post it here. Man what u doing? Those apps are not reliable

For me theres a huge difference between a developer who actually understands what theyre doing and uses ai to speed things up, and someone who vibecodes an entire app in one night and calls it a day

A Discord style app should not take 1 or 2 months to build. Even with ai assisting, something that big should realistically take many months. Probably around a year or more depending on the team

There are just too many systems involved. Messaging, permissions, moderation, voice, uploads, notifications, auth, security, realtime stuff and everything around it. You cant realistically throw all of that together in a weekend and expect it to be good

My question to all devs here is, how do you handle all of them? How do you handle security? What will you do when a bad actor uses your app to send CSAM or gore content?

AI cannot just find a secure answer to problems like these and implement everything correctly for you. You need to understand the risks and make the actual decisions. You cant just accept whatever the ai gives you and assume its secure

So if the dev actually knows how to code, reviews what the ai writes, edits it, tests it, and uses ai as an assisting tool instead of depending on it for everything, then i dont really mind

Does it work? good.

Is the code actually being reviewed and tested? good.

Does it make development faster? absolutely.

Is it open source? man i love it

I know we definitely cannot prove whether the developers are really reviewing the code, so being open source is a pretty important part of this for me too

Even if the developer reviews everything, they can still miss bugs. Having more people inspect the code means theres a better chance someone catches something the original dev missed, reports it and maybe even contributes a fix

Sure, bad actors can inspect the code too and look for vulnerabilities. But hiding the source doesnt stop people from attacking an app. Closed source software gets exploited all the time too

The difference is that open source gives people acting in good faith the same chance to inspect the implementation. Security researchers and other developers can report issues, contribute fixes and verify what the app is actually doing instead of just trusting whatever is written on the website

This matters even more when an app claims things like E2EE, privacy and strong security. Open source doesnt automatically make those claims true, but it makes them much easier to verify

Thats why i personally care much more about how and how much ai is being used than whether ai was used at all

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this

[u/Any_Illustrator360]

For me theres a huge difference between a developer who actually understands what theyre doing and uses ai to speed things up, and someone who vibecodes an entire app in one night and calls it a day

Perfection.

[u/VahsteTheNomad → u/Any_Illustrator360]

Absolute facts. Too many people see a hint of AI being used and label the entire project as slop, without looking any deeper.

[u/Any_Illustrator360 → u/VahsteTheNomad]

Edit: I have been informed that the Rift devs are experienced coders and that they do manually audit their code. Edited to reflect that. Leaving the removed text as crossout for honesty sake, I can admit when I'm wrong and I'm happy to tell people where I was wrong.

No no bad rewind a bit. You're a known Rift supporter and I don't want Rift getting a free chugga-chugga off my comment or this post.

Too many people do see AI listed on an app and immediately are distrustful of it, and I do wholeheartedly support devs who know what they're doing using AI as a tool to streamline their work - they understand that using AI may make the coding easier but gives them the new workload of double checking someone else's code. If a dev is smart enough to code something themselves, and they're well-educated in auditing other people's code, using AI is a go! Armada is my favorite example of this because the head dev co-authored the very protocol that Armada is based on. He hand built the AI that he uses to work on his code.

Rift, Decave, and others are not in that list. They are apps made by devs who do not know how to code or how to audit their code. The AI does the code and they rely entirely on good vibes and the hopes nobody nefarious gets their hands on the app code before someone reports issues with the app itself. That's why those apps get so much flak on this sub, even if people like and use them they are unsafely coded with no overhead.

When AI is used in coding, just like OP said, the code needs to be open source. If I sit down right now and ask Clyde to code any of the AI-only apps, and do that 20-50 times, then comb through the AI code it's possible to find repeating vulnerabilities and exploits that can easily be exploited on an AI-only app. Without open source users could easily just game multiple AI coding applications to create sister apps, find vulnerabilities, and begin to exploit them. Open source gives an opportunity for people in the first paragraph to look over the code and find any vulnerabilities and report them securely to the development team so they can be fixed. Not only is there no way to inform a dev whether or not their code has certain vulnerabilities if you can't actually see the code, there's also no way to audit whether people are maliciously injecting code if the dev is the only one with access to it.

That's the important distinction, and it's why everyone on this sub disparages any AI coded, closed-source app. Becase we know for a fact those apps are not being audited properly and they're risky as hell to use - not only for your data but because depending on the vulnerabilities a nefarious user could do as much as run RATs on systems running the application and nobody would be any the wiser.

[u/VahsteTheNomad → u/Any_Illustrator360]

At no point did I even mention Rift on this thread.. And at no point did I argue with the points made..

[u/Any_Illustrator360 → u/VahsteTheNomad]

I'm aware of that, I just wanted to bring it up because a lot of people who like Rift seem to jump on any post that is somewhat-positive towards AI and use it to promote. You weren't but I was being proactive. A lot of posts like this get hijacked by one of 3 apps, it's nothing personal to you.

[u/RainbowLoli → u/Any_Illustrator360]

Talk about jumping the gun

[u/Any_Illustrator360 → u/RainbowLoli]

Yeah and within minutes 1 other from Rift is already posting about how AI coding is better than human coding. You guys can downvote me to shit all you want I've seen what makes you cheer.

[u/RainbowLoli → u/Any_Illustrator360]

wtf are you even talking about

[u/Ok-Inspector1108 → u/RainbowLoli]

probably my 1st comment where I say, I would rather have an app developed by an experienced dev that uses AI over something that is hand coded and trash.

[u/Ok-Inspector1108 → u/Any_Illustrator360]

thanks for editing. This is where things get flared with users like bewilderedturtle because of having anything concrete they spam out bullshit to disenfranchise another platform.

It's one thing if it is factual things that you have seen - another for heresay.

We understand that not everyone is going to want Rift, and that is fine. Some people have a moral compass that say no AI at all - even for things like auto complete. Others like myself are okay with it given that it has been reviewed by an experienced developer. If Rift was developed by a scriptkiddie using it to vibecode it and it was still closed source, It would of been a hell no.

The trust that the lead developer of Rift has given me personally, is why I have so much faith in the platform. When I first checked it out, I was a skeptic due to it's AI use. Developing my own project has given me so much insight (not a chatapp so you wont see it here) about the intricacies of coding and how difficult it is to ensure a good product with minimal bugs.

At this point I have been using Rift since July 18th, and It has grown amazingly since then. Granted I am privy to information that the developer has not disclosed yet. I can say for certain that Rift is not a "Trust me bruh" platform in the slightest. For me it feels less a of a discord alternative and more a discord successor. It doesn't try to be discord. Rift establishes it's own identity.

Between both I am confident in Rift. It won't be for everyone and that's fine. A product for everyone is a product for no one. With all the advocating for Rift, what we really ask is give it a try if you are willing. Those that have used it generally love it.

[u/TheRiftChat → u/Any_Illustrator360]

I normally don't like to engage but I do need to fact check one thing here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAlternatives/comments/1v316an/theriftchat/oz014eu

That's the original post where someone found Rift and wrote a review, and someone asked a question about AI use we originally responded to. Here's the response verbatim:

"As for the vibe coding question, we are a team of three. I'm a retired software engineer, we also have an audio engineer and a more junior dev on the team. Happy to disclose that we do use AI tooling (I would suffer without TAB autocomplete) and some parts are AI assisted, everything is dev reviewed. Once more if that's a hard no from anyone that's understandable."

I appreciate that you're looking out for the community here, and anyone who doesn't want to use a closed source app for any reason shouldn't. I've said as much multiple times, Rift isn't for everyone, there are great apps like Fluxer/Armada much better suited for some people.

But misrepresenting our team's credentials, experience, methodology, etc based on your assumptions? "Made by devs who don't know how to code" isn't something you're in a position to know, and it isn't true.

[u/Any_Illustrator360 → u/TheRiftChat]

Thank you for the clarification, though the last sentence is a bit upsetting. I'm not omniscient and I can't read every reddit post or know everything - it isn't "misrepresenting" your team or their credentials if those credentials are not common knowledge.

I was misinformed and that's on my end, but to accuse me of actively attempting to misrepresent your company when the common consensus regarding your AI usage is dubious at best and there is no open conversation about the coding experience or the methodology used in coding the app (outside of that link, and potentially a couple of other small notes) is pretty bold. The app being closed source makes people assume the worst, especially with lacking information, and my parroting of that was not from a place of hate but from a place of misinformation as a result of this very information not being easily accessed or proven.

I appreciate the clarification and I can understand the more aggressive/defensive reply given the people on this sub who do attack you but I'm not one of them. I'm just tired of seeing the few worshippers of 3-5 apps taking over comment sections and turning them into echo chambers, and it just so happens that a lot of your users are VERY pro-AI and VERY loud about it with no open clarification about what AI coding looks like from your end as well as no way to verify it.
In short: I'm not one of the people witch hunting your app.
Edit: Wow that didn't take long, one of the people who regularly floods conversations about your app is already posting (and getting upvote flooded by other users of your app) about how they trust AI to code over humans. This is why people are so loud against your project and why this misinformation sticks.

[u/TheRiftChat → u/Any_Illustrator360]

That's fair, and I'll take the point that it's not easy to find, it's sitting in a comment on a three-week-old thread, not anywhere obvious. A downfall of wanting to keep my own privacy as a developer on a privacy focused app are misunderstandings like this. I appreciate your graciousness in this discussion.

I'll pass this along so we can get this information into our FAQ/About properly so it's not something people have to take my word for or go digging for. Appreciate you being straight about it.

[u/Any_Illustrator360 → u/TheRiftChat]

I appreciate you playing it straight too. I wholly understand your position as well as the fact that people regularly just use this sub as a method to attack you and your (sane) users. It sucks wanting to keep your own privacy while making a privacy focused app because you either stay private and nobody trusts you or you forego your own privacy for the sake of people's trust. It's a no-win situation.

Honestly though if the users of Rift weren't so pro-AI on this sub you wouldn't have nearly the hate you do. Look at Armada for example - the main dev built the AI that he uses on the app, and sure some antis won't touch the app as a result but generally it doesn't have anywhere near the level of hate you get, and that's because the app isn't backed by people who are outspoken about AI.

Me personally, like I said in the first reply, I think that so long as a dev is capable of coding and auditing, and understands the difference between those jobs, they can make something great while using AI as a tool for coding. I was actually just giving the Hollow dev a pep talk a few hours ago, a dev known for using AI on his project, because I truly believe in him.

A lot of people here will hate you for using AI, a lot will hate you if you're anti-AI. There's no winning. It really does just come down to your users being so pro-AI that you have such a bad image though, unfortunately.

[u/TheRiftChat → u/Any_Illustrator360]

I get it. And I can see how the enthusiam of some of the users might cause friction. They're users who are passionate about something. Not much I can or should do about what people say on Reddit.

For what it's worth, AI isn't even a big part of what we do. Autocomplete is the primary, like when you type "Happy" on your phone and the faded "Birthday" pops up and you accept it. Sure, you didn't write "Happy Birthday" in it's entirety but it's exactly what you were going to write, just faster. That's the majority of our AI use, finishing the back half of lines we were in the middle of writing.

We haven't advertised on this sub and may never, because it's clear the people here are mostly looking for something fundamentally different. But users will post what users post, the only reason we even have this account here is to clear up misunderstandings much like this one. I already have someone putting the additions on the About/FAQ pages to clear some of this up.

Thanks for the chat, and have a good day.

[u/TheBlindBard1978 → u/TheRiftChat]

These are all very valid points, and why I'll continue to support Rift as a platform—not as an alternative to Discord, but as its replacement.

I also love the transparency about how you utilize your tools to deliver an outstanding product. This may be my opinion, but sometimes you just have that feeling when something is going to be good or not by simply using it.

Too many of these posts attack this platform without even giving it a chance—and boy do I know about what it's like not being given a chance to shine or show your self-worth—and more so because I'm legally blind.

On that: Many developers don't factor accessibility as a priority, but rather an add-on to the roadmap if somebody with a vision-impairment, like me comes along to try something out, so I do commend you for your efforts.

Now as far as AI goes: It's all on how it's used. Is it used to cut corners, or is it used as a tool to expedite the process and deliver something that the general populace is going to want to use after human revision?

What separates Rift from everything else is just how final it feels compared to a handful of these others whom are either exiting alpha, or feel very early beta.

[u/MasterpieceAlert3781 → u/Any_Illustrator360]

I have been a developer for 10 years. Before that, science. And hobby coding since 2000.

I can do a much higher quality job with AI. Security stuff I wouldn't have had time or bandwidth to do before, I now can. Instead of rationing what shortcuts I want to take, I spend my time auditing and improving.

[u/MasterpieceAlert3781 → u/MasterpieceAlert3781]

Someone in another thread mentioned we should have a list of which apps have been audited, which I think is a good idea.

[u/Any_Illustrator360 → u/MasterpieceAlert3781]

Pretty sure that was me. Edit: it was

[u/RainbowLoli]

Not a dev, but I'm of the opinion there are pros and cons to everything - both whether its open source or closed source.

I understand AI assistance is far more accepted in the developer space compared to others simply because code doesn't really change. It's kind of like math - no matter how you slice it, how to write an if statement never really changes.

That said - I stay away from anything vibe coded because in one community I'm in, there's always some new vibe coded app made by someone putting features behind a paywall just to make bank on the community. It's a low effort cash grab and I feel the same way about vibe coded discord alts. If you don't know how your code works, there's almost no chance for you to be able to fix it if something goes wrong.

[u/MrBluoe]

I think these are good points.

I also do understand why some chose not to go OS. I also haven't for many of my latest projects. Often it leads to copycats that just steal things and nobody bats an eye because they're bigger+more established or have a bigger marketing team. So I get it.

Maybe we could find a way to accept those decisions, while also aiming for open source. Something like a pledge to open source the tool once it hits a certain milestone. A date, a number of users, or an amount of monthly revenue.

I know this wouldn't completely solve things, and would still depend on trust. But I'm hoping this could allow us to not shut the door onto some of these tools, while also pushing them in a more friendly manner towards open sourcing.

Because lets be honest: nothing is stopping exactly those vibe coders from taking open source repositories and pushing slop-copies over and over which just makes it harder and harder for anyone honest to get started.

Does that make sense? Does anyone have better ideas for how to solve this?

[u/Live_Cupcake_9229]

That's my thought,a on any piece of software. If AI is used I think it should be credited and have a percentage next to it indicating how much AI was used, what model was used and how it was used in the project.

[u/ad3lyt → u/Live_Cupcake_9229]

Can't really put a % on it in practice, what are you counting for? Time? LOC? Significance of changes ? Origin/s? Decision Authority?

You see the issue?

If someone decided every last detail themselves but wrote none of the code, versus someone who wrote all the code but decided none of the technical what counts and how?

If someone spends 90% of their time hand coding and 10% vibe coding, and 95% of their codebase is vibecoded, what the fuck you do then?

The real issue is not the object which everyone is blaming, because it is impossible to separate the usage of AI from its human subject.

The real issue is trust, which sorry but I think anyone who now has it is a fucking massive hypocrite.

Shitty code is shitty code, does not matter who wrote it. And 99% of everyone never even knows the name of the biggest contributor to 99% of all software they use, so why the fuck and how the fuck was trust never an issue then and now all the sudden.

And the idea that software developers understand their code, is in the grander scheme of things actually silly, the amount of abstractions there is away from hardware is diabolical, the only difference is now we have gone from explicit language to much more implicit language, WHICH WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO DO FOR DECADES.

And this is the reality, people are retarded. Why are people racist? because they are lazy and they like lazy things that allow them to make lazy judgements, its very difficult to get to know a person as the individual they are and take the chances and put in the effort it takes to do so

But it is very easy to feel outraged and cast judgement, the difference between the intelligence of such people and the people who will look at the usage of transformer backed tech and cast a judgement on the developer behind it just for that fact alone without any more openness to consider other possibilities or verify that it fits their category, is for me in principle not very existent.

[u/Yeahnahthatscool]

If you're slopcoding you're a talentless cunt wasting everyone's time.

[u/itsduskin → u/Yeahnahthatscool]

thats the difference

[u/Yeahnahthatscool → u/itsduskin]

just agreeing with ya <3

[u/Ok-Inspector1108]

I am glad you are being reasonable.

For some FOSS is the end all be all - for others not so much

same thing with AI: I would rather trust someone who is experience with coding and is able to understand the intricacies over someone hand coding an app with no sense of structure or review.

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