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Vibe-Code Rescue & Rewrite

From vibe-coded to defensible.

AI got you to a working product fast. We take it from there — an honest assessment, then an incremental refactor or a specification-led rewrite, with tests and senior review ensuring quality at every step.

Vibe coding works — right up until it doesn’t. We take the codebase from there.

The vibe-coding hangover

An AI assistant and a weekend produce a working product, real users show up, and then the bill arrives: files thousands of lines long, the same logic duplicated in four places, no tests, secrets sitting in the source, and every new feature breaking two old ones. The prototype was cheap. The codebase is now the most expensive thing you own.

This is not a moral failing. It is the predictable result of generating code faster than anyone reviewed it. We know the failure modes precisely because we run agentic workflows every day — with the review discipline bolted on.

Refactor or rewrite — we assess, then decide

We do not arrive with a predetermined answer. Discovery produces an honest, written verdict — and either way, the working product you already have is treated as the source of truth. Nothing your users rely on gets lost in translation.

Incremental refactor

When the code is salvageable.

  • Behaviour pinned down with tests first
  • Restructured module by module
  • The application works at every step
  • Reviewed, CI-gated steps — never a big-bang branch

Specification-led rewrite

When salvage costs more than starting over.

  • Real requirements extracted from the working app
  • Proper specifications written
  • Rebuilt with our agentic workflow
  • Every agent output reviewed by a named senior engineer

What we do

Codebase assessment

A written report: what is salvageable, what is not, the risks ranked, and the refactor-vs-rewrite verdict with reasoning you can challenge.

Test harness first

End-to-end tests that pin the current behaviour before anything is touched, so the refactor cannot silently break what works today.

Incremental refactoring

Duplicated logic consolidated, thousand-line files decomposed, dead code removed — in reviewed, CI-gated steps.

Specification-led rewrite

When that is the cheaper path: real specifications extracted from the live application, then a reviewed rebuild.

Security & secrets cleanup

Exposed API keys, missing authorization checks, injection-prone endpoints — the residue of unreviewed AI code, found and fixed.

Quality at handover

The test suite, CI gates, documentation, and a codebase a new engineer can read without archaeology.

When you’d hire us

Every change is a gamble

You vibe-coded an MVP, it found users, and now every change risks breaking something else.

Features keep slowing down

Features that took days now take weeks, and nobody can say why.

No tests, no safety net

There are no tests, so “did this break anything?” is answered in production.

Due diligence is coming

A security audit or first enterprise customer is coming, and the codebase will not survive the look.

The AI is lost in its own code

Your AI assistant has started confusing itself — the context is too tangled for the tool that created it.

How we engage

Per-milestone, like every other Techthos service.

  1. Discovery Free
    We read the codebase and deliver the verdict: refactor, rewrite, or leave it alone
  2. Specifications Quoted per SOW
    The refactor plan or the rewrite specification: scope, order of operations, test strategy, and what stays untouched · 1–2 weeks
  3. Prototype Quoted per SOW
    The test harness running green on current behaviour, plus the first module refactored or the rebuilt core · 1–2 weeks
  4. MVP / MLP Quoted per SOW
    The full refactor or rewrite, CI/CD quality gates, documentation, and handover · 4–16 weeks

You own everything: the source code, the specifications, the test suite, and the documentation. Stop after any milestone — even the assessment alone is a usable artifact.

Why we are credible here

We review AI-generated code for a living. Every line our agents produce on Praximos and Taxisfox passes a named senior engineer before it ships — which means we see, daily, exactly what unreviewed AI code gets wrong and where it hides. Taxisfox runs in production for Greek small businesses and accountants with a full end-to-end suite guarding it. We apply the same discipline to your codebase that we apply to our own.

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