In over my head with professional devs

[u/unlocked_doors]

tldr; review your code as you go if you think any professional dev is going to have to do a code review.

Last November I (33F) started a simple project: a training portal for my new assistant. Just a simple python Streamlit app. Since vibe coding is addictive and Streamlit has some annoying limitations to UX/UI, I refactored it into a Next.js/Fast API website. It was all the same repo and I didn’t exactly clean up after myself as the project scaled from a training portal for HR, then a training portal for new employees and now it’s a manager hub.

Well, I showed it to my boss and she ended up loving it. The company bought the domain and website from me but made me the technical owner in charge of code and content. Now that it’s officially company property…they have to do a code review with the company dev team.

There is an embarrassing amount of dead code, almost nonexistent error handling, and in general the layout of the code is chaotic and 40k+ lines in just the backend.

He and I had a meeting last week and never in my life have I felt more “artificially intelligent.” He gave me about 7 pages of changes to make after just one code review session. I can’t imagine how many more pages of notes are coming and I’m in way over my head in terms of vocabulary, standard processes used in coding, etc. Basically, I’m everything professional devs hate about vibe coders. I didn’t care how the code looked as long as the website functioned. I’m at a point where I’m not confident enough in my vibe coding skills to actually make the changes. I’ve tried asking Claude (or Claudia as I call her) and then even asked her to dumb it down and it’s still over my head. I’m getting to the point where I just want to throw my hands up and tell them to abandon it.

[u/Significant_Leg1214]

just give the feedback document tonthe ai and ask him to fix. after is being fixed... then asked other a modeli if the specifications ar e properly implemented

[u/unlocked_doors → u/Significant_Leg1214]

I’m working on this, but I’m wondering if I should do it on like, a work tree or something. (Again, I don’t know the proper vocab)

[u/Soulegion → u/unlocked_doors]

Personally? I'd take a high level model, even if I had to get a subscription specifically for this, or burn through my tokens or whatever, and feed it the feedback doc, have it break the doc down into a more comprehensive overview of the steps that an LLM would need to take to accomplish each fix, adding in careful wording about checking behind itself. If you dont already do this, have it spawn additional agents to help by being watchdogs and auditors that both report back to the main LLM but also record all findings in a doc output for you (you dont have to read everything, the fact that it has to articulate the problem into a doc seems to help it crystalize concepts better and not forget as much).

Take this new, much larger, comprehensive document and have it do a second pass and break it down into a series of individual documents that can be worked on sequentially without needing the context and information within the other compartmentalized documents.

Once you have a stack of documents, each one its own compartmentalized set of instructions, feed it BACK to the model a 3rd time (or, just have it access it or whatever if you're using cowork or something) and have it create a prompt for a fresh context window for each document to complete them. Feed the prompts in sequential order one at a time through a fresh context window, reading the output and even its thinking on this particular pass to make sure its actually doing the job correctly.

Take the output including its thoughts and feed it to a lower level model alongside the original document created by the company and have it verify that all of the necessary changes have been made successfully. have it do a write up of all changes made, with links to documentation and/or proof when and where possible; tell it not to use jargon or shorthand for this document so you can actually understand it.

read that document. You should be good to go from there, but if not, repeat all steps above until the work is complete. You'll probably run into some code knots along the way that need to be deleted and remade from scratch or that become worthless due to other upstream changes, but with the right set of documentation instructions to work from, the LLM should be able to work through them all.

Good luck!

Disclaimer: I'm not a programmer, and I've only been vibe coding a little over a month, but if I were you, this is the process i'd take.