Vibe coding is fine for discovering the product shape. The failure mode starts when the same chat-driven edits become the release process: no branch protections, no tests on push, and no way to roll back when a prompt change breaks auth.
A practical bar is simple. One repo the company owns, a pipeline that runs your real checks on every PR, staging that mirrors production enough to catch config mistakes, and a deploy you can reverse without heroics. Until that exists, you still have a prototype with customers attached.
Ascendra Ventures often packages that first production chapter as a fixed-price atomic problem: CI/CD, secrets, and the boring reliability work that turns a demo into something you can put in front of paying users. The workflow in this post is the right starting map.
Vibe coding is fine for discovering the product shape. The failure mode starts when the same chat-driven edits become the release process: no branch protections, no tests on push, and no way to roll back when a prompt change breaks auth.
A practical bar is simple. One repo the company owns, a pipeline that runs your real checks on every PR, staging that mirrors production enough to catch config mistakes, and a deploy you can reverse without heroics. Until that exists, you still have a prototype with customers attached.
Ascendra Ventures often packages that first production chapter as a fixed-price atomic problem: CI/CD, secrets, and the boring reliability work that turns a demo into something you can put in front of paying users. The workflow in this post is the right starting map.