A Field Guide to AI Coding Anti-Patterns
Curious about the un-ironic version of this argument? Visit Enterprise Vibe Coding →
What is Slopapalooza?
AI coding is amazing. Until your team starts shipping code nobody understands, nobody owns, and nobody can safely change.
Slopapalooza is the far end of that: a whole organization all-in on AI with none of the engineering discipline — gung-ho leadership, a thin senior bench, agentic tools and broad credentials handed out with one instruction, just ship it. It looks fine on day one. Then it compounds — quietly, invisibly — until the day of reckoning.
This site is a field guide to the most common ways AI-assisted development turns into that mess — and how serious teams avoid it. Satire on the surface, an engineering argument underneath:
AI coding does not remove the need for engineering process. It increases the penalty for not having one.
2026 Lineup
The Anti-Patterns
Nineteen acts. One repo. Zero acceptance criteria.
Main Stage
Side Stage
Each act is a short, useful article: what it is, how it happens, why it’s dangerous, and how a serious team prevents it.
The Useful Bit
How close is your team to Slopapalooza?
A seven-question gut check. Takes ninety seconds. Tells you if you’re shipping AI-assisted code with discipline — or printing wristbands for the festival.
Take the Slop Risk Test →Field Reports
Slop Horror Stories
Have you survived a 9,000-line component? Inherited an API designed entirely by autocomplete? Watched a junior dev merge code they cannot explain?
Tell us. The best (worst) stories get curated and published — anonymized on request.
Submit your story →Slopapalooza is what happens when teams confuse AI speed with engineering discipline.
The serious version of this argument lives at EnterpriseVibeCoding.com.