Ask HN: How can you tell a site/app is vibe coded?

With so many people vibe coding sites and full apps, I feel like there is much more AI slop shown to the user. What are your tell-tale signs? Black background, green and orange gradients, same font, etc. Would love to learn more!

6 points | by gkolli 6 hours ago

5 comments

  • ra0x3 5 hours ago
    For B2B SaaS apps, you'll notice that the panels and navs (top navigation, bottom navigation, left-navigation, etc) are much smaller (which is a slightly more 'modern' look) - e.g., OpenAI/Claude dashboards. In general components are more uniform/standard, fonts are smaller. Again, this is just what I've noticed for specifically B2B SaaS apps. If you ask Claude Design to build you one - you'll see exactly what I'm referring to.

    I honestly don't mind it. For these B2B SaaS apps its nice to have some site consistency. It almost reminds me of a a new "Bootstrap" way of doing things.

  • roundabout-host 5 hours ago
    Often there is the Inter font. Corners are usually quite rounded, there are lots of gradients. Also, I sometimes see weird descriptions of what a particular UI element does, even though it's obvious. It's possible that the LLM is putting them as a comment to the operator.
  • wbnns 3 hours ago
    Biggest one for me is em dashes all throughout the content.
  • sjacob 5 hours ago
    If you can't tell, does it matter?
    • NishanStepak 1 hour ago
      It matters because AI produced material cannot be copyrighted. You need to be able to prove there are significant human edits to protect intellectual property.