Vibe Coding Scales to a Demo

Original post: Vibe Coding Scales to a Demo

A recent post from the Rust Trends newsletter raised an important point which I’m hitting more and more when using AI agents:

Plausible is not the same as correct. And if you don’t have a mental model of how systems behave, it’s genuinely hard to tell the difference between code that works, code that works now, and code that will fail badly later.

Mental model.

That’s the fundamental keyword we should all keep in mind when using AI. It also relates to another recent term: cognitive debt. Or rather, the two are inversely related.

So what does this all mean? It’s easy: you can use AI agents to write code, but you should understand every single line they produce. Understanding improves your mental model and reduces cognitive debt.