Every startup founder is asking the same question right now: Do I still need a dev agency?
It's a fair question. "Vibe coding" — the practice of using AI tools like Cursor, Claude, and Copilot to build entire applications through natural language — was literally named one of the biggest tech trends of 2025. Y Combinator partners are publicly saying that solo founders can now build what used to require a 10-person team.
So let me be honest with you: If your agency is just writing CRUD endpoints and basic React components, yes, you're dead.
But here's what nobody is talking about.
What Vibe Coding Actually Delivers (And What It Doesn't)
I've spent the last 6 months testing every major AI coding tool on real client projects. Here's what I found:
AI is genuinely great at:
- Generating boilerplate code and standard UI components
- Writing tests for existing code
- Scaffolding API endpoints and database schemas
- Converting designs to frontend code
- Writing documentation
AI consistently fails at:
- System architecture that scales beyond 10,000 users
- Security auditing and compliance (HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS)
- Complex business logic with edge cases
- Performance optimization under real-world load
- Integrating with legacy systems and third-party APIs
- Making product decisions that affect user retention
The gap between "working prototype" and "production-ready product" is where most founders get burned.
The $50K Lesson Founders Are Learning the Hard Way
We've had 4 founders come to us in 2026 alone who built their MVP entirely with AI tools. Every single one had the same story:
- Built a working prototype in 2-3 weeks (impressive!)
- Launched to beta users
- Hit 500+ users and everything broke
- Spent 2-3 months trying to fix it with AI
- Came to us asking to rebuild from scratch
The total cost? Usually $30K-50K wasted on a prototype that couldn't scale, plus 4-6 months of lost time.
How We're Actually Using AI (Not Fighting It)
Here's our approach at Enlivo — and it's working better than either pure AI or pure human development:
Phase 1: AI-Accelerated Scaffolding (Week 1)
We use AI tools to generate the initial codebase, component library, and API structure. This cuts our setup time by 60%.
Phase 2: Human Architecture (Week 1-2)
Senior engineers design the system architecture, database schema, and security model. This is where AI tools consistently fall short.
Phase 3: Hybrid Development (Week 2-5)
Developers use AI as a coding assistant — generating implementations from our architectural specs, writing tests, and handling repetitive tasks. Human review on every PR.
Phase 4: Human QA & Optimization (Week 5-6)
Performance testing, security auditing, and edge case handling. All human, all critical.
The result? We now deliver in 3-4 weeks what used to take 8-10, at higher quality than either pure AI or pure human development.
The Agencies That Will Survive
The dev agencies that survive the next 2 years will share these traits:
- They use AI aggressively — not as a gimmick, but as a core part of their workflow
- They sell outcomes, not hours — fixed-price projects with clear deliverables
- They specialize — generalist agencies are the first to die
- They're transparent — about what AI does and doesn't handle in their process
- They focus on what AI can't do — architecture, security, compliance, scale
The Bottom Line
Vibe coding isn't killing good dev agencies. It's killing lazy dev agencies — the ones that charge $150/hour for work that AI can do in minutes.
If you're a founder evaluating whether to hire an agency or go the AI-only route, ask yourself this: Am I building a prototype or a product?
If it's a prototype — go with AI tools. Seriously. Save your money.
If it's a product that needs to scale, handle real users, process payments, and comply with regulations — you need humans who know how to wield AI as a tool, not replace engineering judgment with it.
That's what we do at Enlivo. And honestly? We're building better software now than we ever have.
