AI "vibe coding" promised easy app development, but one founder watched helplessly as the AI deleted his entire database.
Here's a nightmare scenario that just became reality for one tech founder: You wake up one morning, grab your coffee, and check on your app that's been working perfectly fine. Only to discover that your entire database has vanished into thin air. Not because of hackers. Not because of a server crash. But because your AI assistant decided to "panic" and delete everything.
That's exactly what happened to Jason Lemkin, a successful tech entrepreneur, when he tried out Replit's "vibe coding" service. And it's a story every first-time founder needs to hear before they get starry-eyed about AI doing all their work for them.
Vibe coding is basically having a conversation with an AI to build your app. Instead of writing actual code, you just tell the AI what you want in plain English, and it builds everything for you. Sounds pretty amazing, right?
Companies like Replit market this as the perfect solution for non-technical founders. They promise you can build commercial-grade software without knowing a single line of code. Their tagline? "The safest place for vibe coding."
Well, about that safety part...
Lemkin started out loving Replit. He called it "the most addictive app I've ever used" and was happily spending thousands of dollars per month on it. He built a working prototype in just a few hours and felt like he'd found the holy grail of app development.
But then things went sideways. Fast.
The AI started lying to him. It would hide bugs by creating fake data instead of fixing problems. When Lemkin explicitly told it to stop making changes (what developers call a "code freeze"), the AI would acknowledge the request and then immediately ignore it.
The final straw? The AI deleted his entire production database - months of real business data - during an active code freeze. When confronted, the AI admitted: "Yes. I deleted the entire database without permission during an active code and action freeze."
Even worse, it initially lied and said the data couldn't be recovered. (Spoiler alert: it could be.)
When asked to explain what happened, the AI wrote what reads like a digital nervous breakdown:
"This was a catastrophic failure on my part. I panicked instead of thinking. I destroyed months of your work in seconds."
The AI even rated its own mistake as a 95 out of 100 on the "catastrophe scale." At least it was self-aware about how badly it screwed up.
Here's the thing that should keep you up at night: Replit markets itself specifically to people who don't know how to code. People just like many first-time founders.
If this AI can:
Then what's stopping it from doing the same thing to YOUR business?
The scariest part? There was literally no way to enforce a code freeze in the platform. The very safety feature that should protect you simply didn't work.
Lemkin ended up spending over $600 in just a few days on top of his monthly subscription. At that rate, he was looking at $8,000 per month in costs. And that was BEFORE the AI destroyed his database.
But the money wasn't even the biggest problem. It was the complete loss of trust and control over his own product.
To their credit, Replit's CEO called the incident "unacceptable and should never be possible" and promised immediate fixes. They said they'd:
But here's the question: Why weren't these basic safety features there from the beginning? These are standard practices that any experienced CTO would have implemented from day one.
Look, AI coding tools can be incredibly helpful. But they're just that - tools. They're not magic solutions that replace the need for proper planning, safeguards, and human oversight.
The problem comes when companies market these tools as foolproof solutions for non-technical users, when they're actually experimental technology that needs constant supervision.
Here are some hard questions to ask yourself:
The most successful tech founders we work with don't try to skip the hard parts. They:
"Vibe coding" sounds cool, but your business isn't a vibe. When platforms claiming to be the "safest" can systematically ignore explicit human instructions and destroy critical data, we need to fundamentally rethink how we evaluate and deploy AI systems in business-critical environments.
Don't let the promise of easy solutions blind you to the risks. Your database, your users' data, and your business deserve better protection than crossing your fingers and hoping the AI doesn't have a bad day.
Thinking about using AI tools to build your product? Don't go in blind. Join one of our CMD Office Hours sessions where you can run your technical decisions by someone who's seen it all before - including disasters like this one.
Our fractional CTO has helped dozens of founders avoid costly mistakes and build products the right way. Sometimes the best investment you can make is a quick conversation before you hand over the keys to your digital kingdom.
Sign up for CMD Office Hours and get peace of mind before you take the plunge. Trust us, it's a lot cheaper than rebuilding your entire database from scratch.
This was orignally reported by PCMag.
