How to Secure Your Vibe-Coded Project (Before It Secures You)

You're moving fast. AI is writing code. You're shipping features daily. But speed creates blind spots—and security vulnerabilities love blind spots.

I've watched developers ship vibe-coded projects that worked but had SQL injection holes, exposed API keys, and broken authentication. Not because they were careless—because they were solo and didn't have time to review every line AI generated.

Here's the truth: you can't manually audit everything. But you can automate the audit.

Why Incremental Reviews Aren't Enough

Tools like /security-review catch issues in pull requests. That's great for new code. But what about legacy code? Configurations that haven't been touched in months? Dependencies with known CVEs?

Incremental reviews are daily vitamins. Full audits are annual physicals. You need both.

What a Security Audit Should Cover

A comprehensive security audit doesn't just scan for SQL injection. It evaluates your entire attack surface against industry-standard frameworks:

• OWASP Top 10 2021 — Broken access control, cryptographic failures, injection attacks
• OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 — Broken object-level authorization, mass assignment, security misconfigurations
• Cloud & Infrastructure Security — Misconfigured S3 buckets, exposed environment variables, weak IAM policies
• Supply Chain Security — Vulnerable dependencies, outdated packages, insecure third-party integrations

The Four Layers of a Proper Audit

1. Reconnaissance: Understanding Your Stack

Before auditing, the tool needs to know what you're running: Node.js? Python? Docker? Postgres or MongoDB? Framework: Express, FastAPI, Next.js?

This determines which vulnerability patterns to look for. SQL injection matters in Postgres apps. NoSQL injection matters in MongoDB apps. Different stacks, different attack vectors.

2. Code Analysis: Finding Hidden Vulnerabilities

This is where the audit scans every file—not just recent changes—looking for patterns that indicate security issues:

• User input flowing directly into database queries (SQL/NoSQL injection risk)
• Hardcoded secrets or credentials in code
• Missing authentication checks on sensitive endpoints
• Weak cryptography (MD5, SHA1) for passwords or tokens
• Overly permissive CORS policies
• Exposed debug endpoints in production

// BAD: SQL injection vulnerability
app.get('/user', (req, res) => {
  const userId = req.query.id;
  db.query(`SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ${userId}`); // Dangerous!
});

// GOOD: Parameterized query
app.get('/user', (req, res) => {
  const userId = req.query.id;
  db.query('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ?', [userId]);
});

3. Configuration Review: Infrastructure Security

Code vulnerabilities are obvious. Configuration vulnerabilities are subtle:

• Are environment variables properly isolated?
• Do Docker containers run as root? (They shouldn't.)
• Are cloud storage buckets publicly accessible?
• Is TLS enforced on all endpoints?
• Are rate limits configured to prevent abuse?

These issues don't show up in code reviews. They live in config files, environment variables, and infrastructure settings.

4. Dependency Scanning: Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

Your code might be secure, but your dependencies might not be. Audit tools scan package.json, requirements.txt, and go.mod against databases of known CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures).

If a package has a critical security flaw, you'll know—and you'll get specific remediation guidance (upgrade to version X.Y.Z).

How to Run an Effective Security Audit

If you're using Claude Code, you can install a /security-audit slash command that automates this entire process. It performs reconnaissance, analyzes every file, reviews configurations, and scans dependencies—generating an actionable report.

The key difference from incremental reviews: it catches everything—even vulnerabilities in code you wrote months ago and haven't touched since.

Installation

Global installation (available across all projects):

mkdir -p ~/.claude/commands
curl -o ~/.claude/commands/security-audit.md https://example.com/security-audit.md

Project-specific installation (for team collaboration):

mkdir -p .claude/commands
curl -o .claude/commands/security-audit.md https://example.com/security-audit.md

Running the Audit

From Claude Code, type:

/security-audit

The tool will:

1. Identify your tech stack
2. Scan every file for vulnerability patterns
3. Review configurations (Docker, env files, cloud settings)
4. Check dependencies against CVE databases
5. Generate a prioritized report with specific remediation steps

When to Audit

Use /security-review during daily development for fast feedback on pull requests.

Use /security-audit monthly or quarterly for comprehensive assessment—especially before major releases or when adding new features that touch sensitive data.

Think of them as complementary: one catches new issues, the other catches everything.

The 20% That Prevents 80% of Breaches

Most security incidents aren't sophisticated zero-days. They're basic misconfigurations: exposed API keys, missing authentication, unpatched dependencies.

A security audit catches these low-hanging issues—the 20% of configs that prevent 80% of breaches. You're not trying to build Fort Knox. You're trying to avoid being the easy target.

Security is a Discipline, Not a Feature

When you're running solo, security feels like something you'll "get to later." But later turns into never—until something breaks.

Automate the audit. Run it regularly. Fix what it finds.

You don't need a security team. You need visibility into what's broken and specific guidance on how to fix it. That's what a proper security audit provides.

Because the best time to find vulnerabilities is before attackers do.