Intent page
Vibe-coded app reliability terms for builders using AI agents.
If your AI-built app works in the demo path but breaks on refresh, retry, double submit, failed API calls, or return visits, the missing vocabulary is usually state, recovery, and side-effect control.
Start with the symptom
Users lose progress after refresh
Call this draft persistence, resumability, and checkpointing. The app needs a known saved point, not another loading spinner.
One failed step traps the whole flow
Call this a missing recovery path, weak fallback UI, or incomplete error taxonomy.
Double-click creates duplicate records
Call this an idempotency, race condition, or transaction boundary problem.
The UI and server disagree
Call this weak state reconciliation, unclear source of truth, or stale local state.
The agent fixes one bug and breaks another
Call this missing regression set, eval harness, golden tests, or acceptance coverage.
The flow has impossible transitions
Call this a missing statechart, transition table, guard condition, or invariant.
Exact terms to use
Statechart
Names every allowed state, event, transition, guard, and impossible transition before UI code grows messy.
Transition table
Turns back, next, submit, retry, cancel, edit, and resume behavior into explicit rules.
Idempotency
Makes retries, double clicks, and repeated API calls safe instead of duplicating records or charges.
Checkpoint
Creates known-good points where the user can resume after refresh, tab close, or partial completion.
Fallback UI
Gives users a useful path when data, permissions, API calls, or components fail.
Recovery path
Defines what happens after timeout, validation failure, network loss, stale state, or partial success.
State reconciliation
Keeps client state, server state, drafts, and URL state from contradicting each other.
Regression set
Protects the important flows that must keep working after every AI-generated code change.
Observability
Makes failures inspectable through logs, traces, events, and user-visible status instead of hidden guesswork.
Weak wording vs exact wording
Weak wording
My app is buggy. Fix the wizard and make it more robust.
Exact wording
Audit this workflow for explicit statecharts, transition tables, guard conditions, idempotency, checkpoints, fallback UI, state reconciliation, timeout budgets, recovery paths, and regression tests across refresh, retry, partial failure, double submit, and return visits.
Reliability checklist
State model
List every state the user, server, draft, payment, upload, or background job can be in. Name impossible states explicitly.
Transition rules
Define what back, next, edit, cancel, retry, resume, timeout, and submit can do from each state.
Side-effect safety
Make writes, emails, payments, imports, webhooks, and retries idempotent so repeated actions do not duplicate outcomes.
Recovery behavior
For every failure mode, define what the user sees, what is preserved, what can be retried, and what support/debug data exists.
Persistence and resume
Decide what saves locally, what saves on the server, when checkpoints are created, and how stale drafts reconcile.
Regression proof
Keep a regression set for the fragile flows so each new AI-agent change proves it did not break core paths.
Related guides
AI-built app reliability checklist: failure modes and exact terms.
A practical checklist for mapping production failure modes in AI-built apps to state, recovery, side-effect, observability, and regression vocabulary.
AI coding agent vocabulary for robust app workflows.
AI coding agent vocabulary for fixing vibe-coded apps: statecharts, step state, transition tables, guard conditions, draft persistence, idempotency, checkpoints, fallback UI, and recovery paths.
Coding-agent terms cheat sheet.
A coding-agent vocabulary cheat sheet for state, workflow, retries, recovery, persistence, and failure handling.
What to ask an AI coding agent when a wizard breaks.
Expert vocabulary for broken multi-step wizards: statecharts, transition tables, guard conditions, step state, idempotency, fallback UI, and recovery paths.
Common questions
Why do vibe-coded apps break after the demo path?
They often optimize for visible screens instead of explicit state, transition rules, side-effect control, persistence, and recovery behavior.
What vocabulary should I use before asking for code?
Use statecharts, transition tables, guard conditions, idempotency, checkpoints, fallback UI, recovery paths, state reconciliation, observability, and regression tests.
Is this a prompt template?
No. The goal is to find the right engineering terms first. You can use those terms in search, specs, code review, or AI-agent instructions after that.