The honest answer
Can you put a vibe-coded app in production?
Yes — and plenty of good businesses run on one. AI-generated code is not bad code. The problem is narrower and more specific than the internet suggests: it is complete code for the feature and absent code for everything around it.
Ask an AI for a booking system and you get a working booking system. You will not be told that the database will hand any signed-in user everyone else's bookings, because nothing in the request was about that, no test fails, and the app looks correct from inside. The gap is invisible precisely because the feature works.
So the question is not whether AI-built code can go to production. It is whether the short list of things AI reliably leaves out has been closed. That list is remarkably consistent:
The data layer ships without access rules
AI writes the tables and the queries. It rarely writes the policy that says which user may read which row. Everything works while you are the only user.
Secrets end up where the browser can read them
Service keys and admin credentials get placed in client-side code because that is where they make the feature work. Anyone can open developer tools and take them.
Storage is public because public is the default
Uploads work immediately when the bucket is open. Locking it down is a second step that nothing forces you to take, and no test fails if you skip it.
Nothing separates the sandbox from the real thing
When the tool that writes your code can also reach your production data, one confident wrong command is all it takes.
Every item on that list is findable by reading the code. None of it requires a penetration test, and all of it is far cheaper to fix before launch than after — which is the entire argument for having someone look.