July 2, 2025
Vibe coding has become the catch-all term, from non-technical people using v0 to highly technical engineers racing with Claude Code & MCP. The problem is that these are two very different practices lumped under one label.
We can do better by drawing a clear line: vibe coding is rapid, playful exploration, while HiVE coding (High Velocity Engineering) is all about building production-grade software with speed and quality.
When I’m in search of the latest production-grade techniques, I’m not looking for Lovable or Bolt, I’m wanting to know how serious engineers are using Playwright and MCP to automate non-trivial QA in multiple cloud environments.
We need a term that is unambiguously about our craft, specifically one that respects code quality, correctness, security, and precision while embracing modern AI practices and benefits. Why? Because we want to move fast and make things. Others that rely on us do too. Many actually want HiVE coding because they want production quality AND speed, but don’t know how to ask since vibe coding and AI coding have become synonymous. And many of us are already HiVE coding.
When a founder wants to create fast in this environment, do they know what to ask for? You’ve seen the job post for a vibe-coding frontend engineer. Sometimes a vibe coder is exactly right, as long as everyone knows what that means. Need quick prototypes not meant for production? Great, vibe it up. Need a platform you can trust in production, with security in mind? That is HiVE coding.
HiVE coding (High Velocity Engineering) is all about building production-grade software with speed and quality.
Key principles of HiVE coding:
The term took off after Andrej Karpathy’s February post and spread quickly across the land. One of the key points is to “forget that the code even exists”. But what got lost was the comment near the end:
“It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing.”
But for production code, we don’t want to forget the code exists. We want to prompt with AI and move fast, then we’re all in on the code. Is it elegant, does it support future scale, does it have subtle security issues, is it robust, and all the usual software engineering objectives.
We use Claude Code. Or Codex. Or Aider & Qwen3. And we interact with subtle details and know how to ask and answer technical questions because of our years of experience. Without that review and expertise, we get surprises and AI slop. We get vibe debt. Just like traditional software, when you throw the foundation together poorly it gets harder and harder to evolve that system, exploding technical debt.
Here are the core bad vibrations:
Fast Now, Drag Later. You move fast at first, but then accrue “vibe debt.” Code that looks fine in the moment collapses under scale, maintainability, or production demands.
Vibe coding does serve a purpose though. It is extremely cool for creating prototypes. It allows non-technical people to express ideas and create things they would never have been able to create. Even technical folks can explore ideas much more quickly and visualize the results.
The loop looks like this: prompt, skim, tweak, repeat, ship. It’s intoxicating because it feels like progress. It even looks like it works, well until it doesn’t. Any engineer knows that many different programs can produce the same visible output, but only some are elegant, flexible, testable, and safe. The rest are Swiss cheese.
Vibe produces prototypes. It does not scale production. It creates holes in security, correctness, and operability. That is fine when you are sketching ideas or if you do not write code for a living. It is not fine for systems that carry real customers and real data.
Context matters. What are you trying to do and which is the best choice?
Bottom line: vibe is great for ideas while HiVE is how you ship. Counting vs calculus, both might be math, but make sure you choose the right one for the job.
So what are the tools and methodologies that support high-velocity engineering? We’re constantly trying out new ones, various MCP servers, new techniques.
“Is HiVE anti-no-code / anti-non-technical builders?” Not at all. Vibe coding is empowering for non-technical creators. But if you’re running production systems, your users deserve HiVE standards.
“Why give it a new name?” Because “vibe coding” already has one. The industry needs a clear contrast between casual AI-assisted tinkering and production-ready AI engineering. Without a new term, the two get blurred, and teams and founders suffer the consequences and confusion. Plus we want to be able to search for HiVE topics without having vibe noise drown it out.
“Isn’t this just good engineering?” HiVE builds on core engineering principles, but it re-centers them in the AI era. Prompting, diffs, lineage, and reproducibility are not optional anymore but are core to velocity. HiVE puts a name on that shift.
“Does HiVE mean no rapid prototyping?” Not at all. Vibe coding still has value for ideation, demos, and spikes. HiVE simply makes clear where the line is: vibes for play and exploration, HiVE for prod.
“Aren’t AI assistants getting so good this won’t matter soon?” We will always need to see and understand what is happening behind the curtain. Explainability and visibility are how we verify and remain aware of key decisions and structures. LLMs and assistants may get exponentially better, but how we stay in control is what matters most. HiVE makes sure engineers keep that visibility as AI continues to evolve.
“Doesn’t this slow me down?” It might be slower to review the code, read diffs, add tests, and check lineage but in production, it is faster. Why? Less rework, fewer rollbacks, and lower hidden risk. True velocity is measured over weeks, not hours.
“Won’t this just become the default eventually?” We think so. Just as CI/CD became the norm for serious software teams, HiVE is the natural path for AI-assisted engineering. Giving it a name accelerates adoption, because HiVE is not just “good practice” but a methodology like Agile. Agile reshaped how teams plan and deliver; HiVE reshapes how humans and AI build code together. We aren’t creating it, just putting a name to it.
"How does DevSwarm relate to HiVE coding?" DevSwarm is the tool we built to serve as the foundation for HiVE coding practices, but HiVE is about the richer ecosystem, well beyond a single product.
We don’t have to look far to see what happens when experimentation jumps straight to prod.
If HiVE becomes the norm, we get faster shipping cycles, more engineers staying in the loop (and profession), better control over safety and cost. This is the AI moment and the HiVE movement. Join the community, share patterns, find the best tools, and help set the standard for how humans and AI build systems together.
If this resonates, join us. We will keep sharing the practices, tools, and patterns that work with real teams, along with playbooks, diffs, configs, and MCP recipes. Ready to ship with HiVE? Download DevSwarm and run your first HiVE loop today.
Follow the high-velocity engineering movement as we’re all in on it: See more and follow us on LinkedIn, X, or devswarm.ai.
Speed without sacrifice.
