DRAWING SET ATH-26-001 · PREPARED FOR THE OWNER OF A WORKING APP
ISSUED FOR DAY 2NOT A DRILLRetrofit of a
vibe‑coded
structure
You built a real app with AI, and it works — people use it. Then day 2 arrived: you fix one thing and three other things break, the code reads like someone else wrote it, and every deploy is a held breath. This set is the retrofit. Not more magic on top of magic — engineering, installed: tests, gates, review, and an operating system that runs your repo while you keep the stamp.
- No magic is specified anywhere in this set. The structure is hardened first — tests, CI and review are installed before anything operates.
- The gate blocks only what a change breaks. What was already broken is recorded to the debt schedule, honestly — never used to hide new damage, never allowed to block your new work.
- Every change leaves the shop as a pull request bearing the owner's stamp. Nothing ships without it.
- Autonomy is measured, L0–L5, and earned rung by rung from the run record. It is never claimed.
- The set is maintained by the apparatus it describes. Athema's own repository runs on athema.
| G-000 | COVER SHEET — GENERAL NOTES | THIS SHEET |
| S-101 | EXISTING CONDITIONS SURVEY | THE FAULTS, NAMED |
| S-201 | REINFORCEMENT PLAN | HARDEN |
| M-301 | INSTALLED SYSTEMS | EQUIP |
| OP-401 | OPERATING SEQUENCE | OPERATE |
| C-501 | CERTIFICATION — LADDER OF AUTONOMY | MEASURED |
| CS-601 | SCHEDULE OF COSTS | VS. RESCUE |
| IN-701 | INSTALLATION SEQUENCE | CONNECT |
| PR | a proposed change, shown in plain words, that ships only when you approve it |
| CI | checks that run automatically on every single change |
| E2E | a robot walking through your app the way a customer would |
| L0–L5 | the Ladder of Autonomy — how much runs without you, measured |
| NTS | not to scale. the only thing here that isn't measured |
Existing conditions survey
FIELD EVIDENCE · VERBATIMFIRST, THE PART NOBODY SAYS OUT LOUD
The build was real. The app stands, and people use it — that's the win. This survey isn't a judgment of you; it's what building at AI speed without an engineering department always leaves behind. Every fault below was found in the field, in other builders' own words.
| MARK | OBSERVED CONDITION | FIELD EVIDENCE |
|---|---|---|
| F-01 | The regression loop. Every patch loosens two joints somewhere else. Shipping slows to a crawl. | “fix one thing and break three other things”r/SaaS · r/ClaudeAI · r/nocode — independently, verbatim |
| F-02 | No tests, no CI, no review. Nothing holds a change in place; the codebase is legacy the day it ships. | “tech debt as fast as the LLM can spit it out”Steve Krouse, val.town — 758 pts on HN |
| F-03 | The owner can't read the structure. Your only recourse is asking the AI again — “like paying off credit card debt with another credit card.” | “code you didn't write… logic you never learned… at 2am”"Vibe coding in 2026", Medium |
| F-04 | Exposed surfaces. Keys in client code, unlocked routes, zero monitoring. The publicly-hacked class of failure. | “guys, i'm under attack”@leojr94, mid-incident — the canonical day-2 moment |
| F-05 | Fear of touching it. The app you were proud of becomes the app you're afraid of. Features stall. | “If something works, NEVER TOUCH IT.”r/nocode — survival rule |
SURVEY NOTE — ALL FIELD EVIDENCE IS QUOTED VERBATIM FROM PUBLIC THREADS, 2025–2026. NONE OF IT IS RARE. THE TRADE PRESS NOW HAS A NAME FOR THE PATTERN: “THE VIBE CODING RECKONING.”
Reinforcement plan
MOVE 1 OF 3 — HARDENNEW WORK SHOWN IN BLUE
Hardening comes before anything else — no agent operates on an unbraced structure. Athema rebuilds the fragile spans into tested, production-quality software, without you needing to read a line of it. Nothing is demolished: your app's behavior is the contract. The retrofit braces the structure; it doesn't replace it.
- K1Test members. A real suite where there was none — anchored at the load-bearing paths your users actually walk, not sprinkled at random.
- K2CI bracing. Every push carries the full load test. Nothing merges untested, ever again.
- K3Review joints. Two lenses on every change — does it match the plan, and is the code sound — before it reaches you.
- K4Security pass. Exposed keys, unlocked routes, missing auth checks: the F-04 class of fault, closed.
- K5Honest coverage. The coverage number is parsed from a real report — or given as a structural proxy and labeled as one. Never invented.
Installed systems
MOVE 2 OF 3 — EQUIPTHE AGENTIC OPERATING SYSTEM
Equipping is the second move: an operating system for the repo, installed in the repo. The machinery is deterministic — control flow, state, git plumbing are fixed code, identical everywhere. The adaptive part is a small, typed surface. Hallucination has almost nowhere to enter, and a bad step fails loudly at a contract instead of quietly corrupting a run.
| TAG | EQUIPMENT | FUNCTION |
|---|---|---|
| SPEC-01 | Spec-driven loop | Every change starts as a written plan — reviewable intent before a line moves. |
| TEST-02 | Self-healing test cycle | Failures are reproduced, fixed surgically, and the suite re-runs. Capped, never endless. |
| REV-03 | Dual-lens review | Spec conformance and code-level soundness, graded by severity. |
| CON-04 | Output contracts | Typed seams between every step. A bad adaptation fails loudly at the boundary. |
| E2E-05 | Journey registry | Real browser and mobile runs of your actual user flows — curated, budgeted, never sprawling. |
| SAFE-06 | Safety hooks | Destructive commands blocked; secrets unread; guardrails installed at the tool boundary. |
INSTALLER'S NOTE — ATHEMA'S OWN REPOSITORY RUNS ON THIS SAME OPERATING SYSTEM. THE TOOL IS BUILT WITH ITSELF.
| SHELL | verbatim code: control flow, state, git plumbing — never regenerated per repo |
| CORE | the adaptive surface: a small, typed config the agent fills — not code it invents |
| SEAM | output contracts, validated at runtime — a bad step fails loudly, never silently |
Operating sequence
MOVE 3 OF 3 — OPERATEWORK ARRIVES IN PLAIN WORDS. IT LEAVES AS A PULL REQUEST WITH PROOF ATTACHED.
Operating is the third move. You describe a bug, a tweak, a feature — you judge the change, not the code. The sequence runs in athema's hosted cloud and narrates itself as it goes. The gate at its center is drawn at full size in Detail D-1 below.
FIG 4-1 — THE OPERATING SEQUENCE · READ LEFT TO RIGHT · RED = RETURNED WORK, NEVER SHIPPED WORK
DETAIL D-1 — THE GATE, HONESTLY
A vibe-coded repo is never all-green, and a gate that demands perfection would simply never open. D-1 compares against your baseline: it blocks a change only for what that change itself broke, and files what was already broken to the debt schedule — visible, scheduled, and never used to wave new damage through.
This is the answer to the objection you've already lived: more AI on top of broken AI makes it worse. The gate isn't judgment by vibes — it's the same check a good engineer runs, made mechanical: nothing merges that breaks something that used to work. When the gate blocks, the work goes back to the shop with the failing check attached — it does not go to you.
- The baseline is honest: pre-existing failures are surfaced on day one, not discovered during an emergency.
- The convergence loop is bounded. It fixes, re-validates everything together, and fails closed rather than thrashing.
- A justified deviation from the plan is recorded and adjudicated — not silently absorbed.
MOUNTED PLATES — THE PRODUCT SURFACES, REDRAWN FOR THIS SET
RUN 412 · STARTED 3:39 PM
A discount-code field for your checkout.
You asked: “Customers can't find where to type their discount code.”
- UNDERSTAND
- BUILD
- TEST
- PROOF
- YOUR STAMP
- 3:39Read your request and the checkout code around it — chose the smallest change that works.
- 3:40Wrote the field and its label. Two files touched; nothing else disturbed.
- 3:41Ran 214 checks across 6 browsers and 3 phone sizes. All passing.
- 3:43Filmed the new field working in a real browser — end to end, with a live discount code.
- 3:44Everything is ready. Waiting for your stamp — it will wait as long as it takes.
| CHECKOUT PAGE | 2 FILES |
| PAYMENT CODE | NEVER |
| CUSTOMER DATA | NEVER |
READY FOR YOUR SIGN-OFF
A discount-code field for your checkout
- 01A new “Discount code” box appears on your checkout page, just above the total.
- 02A valid code drops the total by the right amount, instantly.
- 03A wrong code gets a friendly message — never an error screen.
RISK — LOW. All tests pass; nothing else on your site changed. Touches checkout, which always needs a human. That's you.
FOUND ALONG THE WAY — 2 pre-existing issues, filed to the debt schedule. Separate from this change.
DECLINE OR ASK FOR CHANGES — ALWAYS AVAILABLE. THE CODE ITSELF: ONE CLICK AWAY, NEVER REQUIRED.
Certification — the Ladder of Autonomy
MEASURED, NOT CLAIMED- The metric is the intervention rate — how often a human had to step in — measured per run, from the record.
- A rung is granted by the record, not the roadmap. Nothing above your comfort ships alone: the dial is yours.
- The record is inspectable — every run, its cost, and its verdict sit on your dashboard.
AUTONOMY IS THE RESULT, NOT THE PROMISE
“Fully autonomous” is the claim that got API keys leaked and checkouts bypassed. Athema scores autonomy instead: the ladder is measured from the run record — how often a human had to step in — and a repo climbs only when the record supports it. An L-number is what an engineer would stamp; a vibe is not.
CERTIFICATE OF AUTONOMY
maple-storefront.com
SMALL FIXES
THIS MONTH — 12 CHANGES SHIPPED · 1 NEEDED YOUR HAND · $12.40 OF $50 BUDGET
PLATE NOTE — THIS IS YOUR DASHBOARD'S OWN RECORD: THE PRODUCT GRADING ITSELF AND SHOWING ITS WORK. IT IS NOT A THIRD-PARTY CERTIFICATION, AND IT NEVER PRETENDS TO BE.
Schedule of costs
TEMPORARY WORKS VS. PERMANENT WORKSTHE MARKET ALREADY PRICES THIS PROBLEM
When a vibe-coded app breaks badly enough, owners pay $2,500–$6,000 for a human rescue — around $200 an hour, one to four weeks, per incident. Sound engineering, rented by the emergency. A rescue is scaffolding: it comes down when the crew leaves, and the faults that caused it stay.
SCHEDULE OF WORKS — PAY FOR THE WORK, NOT THE SEATS
A plan is a monthly budget of work. Use it on fixes, features, or the quiet upkeep you never see.
SOLO
A side project, or your first app.
$50/mo
- The watch, every night
- Every change stamped by you
- Morning notes & metered costs
STUDIO
A real, growing product — or a few.
$300/mo
- Everything in Solo
- The full autonomy dial, L0–L5
- Signals from customers & reviews
SCALE
A portfolio under one roof.
Let's talk
- Higher autonomy ceilings
- Concierge onboarding
- A human on call
ANNUAL: TWO MONTHS FREE · CHANGE OR LEAVE ANY MONTH · UNUSED BUDGET ROLLS OVER ONCE. RESCUE FIGURES: PUBLISHED MARKET RATES FOR VIBE-CODE REPAIR ENGAGEMENTS, 2026.
Installation sequence
COMMISSIONING — MINUTES, NOT WEEKSConnect the repo, grant one scoped permission, and athema surveys, hardens and equips — then opens one setup pull request. Your stamp turns the systems on. Your live app is never touched directly: the main branch stays locked to everyone, including athema.
STEP 01
CHOOSE SOURCE
Wherever your app lives: a GitHub repo, Lovable, v0, Bolt, a zip, a git URL.
STEP 02
ONE PERMISSION
The GitHub App, scoped: propose changes for review, protect your main branch. About 20 seconds.
STEP 03
THE SETUP RUN
It reads how your app is built, rebuilds the rough spots, installs the operating system, sets up the safety checks.
STEP 04
ONE SETUP PR
What changed, in plain words — including what was already broken before it started. Recorded, not blamed.
STEP 05
UNDER CARE
Describe what you want. Watch it work, in plain words. Stamp what ships. The ladder starts climbing.
ALT-A — IF SETUP HITS A SNAG IT PAUSES SAFELY, YOUR LIVE APP UNTOUCHED; IT RESUMES WHERE IT STOPPED, OR A REAL PERSON FINISHES WITH YOU. · ALT-B — CONCIERGE: THE TEAM INSTALLS IT FOR YOU.
THE DRAWINGS ARE DONE. THE CREW IS STANDING BY.
Commission the retrofit
Install the GitHub App. Get one setup PR. Stamp it — and stop being afraid of your own codebase.
APPROVED FOR ISSUESET ATH-26-001 · REV A