A thread on r/webdevelopment asked whether web development is still worth learning in 2026 (Webdesigner Depot rounded up the replies). One reply stuck with me. The commenter suggested developers position themselves as an agency that offers "AI Remediation": fixing sites that a founder or a staff member vibe-coded without knowing how to review, host, secure or make them accessible.

The idea is simple. More people can now generate a website in an afternoon. Some of those sites will have broken mobile forms, slow pages, accessibility gaps or security holes, and someone will have to fix them.

I can't decide whether that's a real opportunity or a trap.

Why it might be the job:

  • There will be a lot of these sites, and most owners won't know what's wrong, only that "it doesn't work on my phone."
  • Debugging someone else's messy code is a real skill. AI-generated code that nobody fully read is messy code with extra confidence.
  • It pushes developers toward the parts AI is weaker at: judgment, security, performance and knowing what "done" means.

Why it might be a dead end:

  • If AI builds sites badly today, it may fix them well next year. Remediation could be a short window, not a career.
  • Cleanup work is often underpaid. Clients who chose the cheapest way to build may also want the cheapest way to fix.
  • "Fix this AI site" can turn into "rebuild this AI site," and that's a hard conversation when the client thinks it's 90% finished.

The same thread had a line I keep coming back to: "You should never have an AI write something you could not write yourself." If that's true, the people fixing AI sites will be the ones who learned the fundamentals the slow way.

So, what do you think?

  • Have you been asked to fix a vibe-coded or AI-built site yet? What was actually wrong with it?
  • Would you market yourself as "AI remediation," or does that sound like a niche that disappears in two years?
  • If you've done this work, did you fix it or end up rebuilding?

I'd especially like to hear from freelancers and agency folks, since you're the ones getting these calls.