I vibe-coded my first real project — here's what actually happened

I've been a full-stack dev for 4+ years (React, Next.js, Node, NestJS), so I went into vibe coding thinking it'd just be "coding but faster." It wasn't quite that.

I run an independent practice building for small agencies and fashion/retail brands, and I started leaning on AI tools (Cursor, Claude Code) to move faster on client work. The first 60-70% was genuinely magical — scaffolding, boilerplate, even decent architecture suggestions came together way quicker than writing it by hand.

Where it got messy was the last stretch — auth edge cases, a deployment config the AI kept "fixing" back to broken, and a couple of times it confidently rewrote logic I hadn't asked it to touch. Being a dev already, I could catch it and course-correct, but I kept thinking about how differently this would've gone for someone non-technical.

Curious what this community's experience has been:

Has AI ever confidently gone down the wrong path on you, and how did you catch it?

Do you treat it more as an executor (you architect, it writes) or let it drive more?