Missing Error Handling in Vibecoded Apps

The clearest sign of missing error handling is a white screen of death. When a React component throws an unhandled error and no error boundary exists, the entire app goes blank. Check the browser console for uncaught exceptions — vibecoded apps are notorious for leaving these unhandled.

Another indicator is the app freezing in an indeterminate state. A button shows a loading spinner forever because the promise rejection was never caught. Or a list remains empty with no indication whether data is loading, failed to load, or genuinely empty. These are all symptoms of missing error handling.

Simulate failure conditions. Disable your network connection and interact with the app to see how it handles offline scenarios. Use browser DevTools to throttle network speed or block specific API endpoints. Try accessing resources that do not exist or submitting requests with malformed data.

Test edge cases that produce null or undefined values. Navigate directly to deep links that expect data from previous screens. Refresh the page mid-flow. These actions expose the missing try-catch blocks and absent error boundaries that AI generators routinely omit.

Add error boundaries at the layout level to catch rendering errors and show a fallback UI instead of a white screen. Wrap all async operations in try-catch blocks and display meaningful error messages to the user.

Implement a global error handler for uncaught promise rejections and runtime errors. Create reusable error state components that give users a clear message and a way to retry. In vibecoded apps, the pattern of wrapping API calls with proper loading, success, and error states is almost always incomplete.