VCDK Vibe-Coding Detox Klinic · Est. 2026
Now accepting Q3·2026 patients Alicante · Amsterdam · Remote
▮ Bulletin · Vol. I · No. 1 Filed: 09 May 2026 · Alicante, Spain

We treat
codebases
ruined by AI.

The Vibe-Coding Detox Klinic is a specialist consultancy for organisations whose PHP applications have developed an unfortunate dependency on autocomplete. Founded by a senior engineer with 30 years of clean diagnoses, we offer rehabilitation, re-architecture, and — when prognosis is severe — a dignified rewrite.

Take the Assessment → Meet the consultant ~3 min · 7 questions · anonymous
PRIMUM · NON · COMMITTERE VIBE-CODING DETOX KLINIEK · EST · MMXXVI · CODE · CARE · vcdk

Indications

Codebases authored partially or wholly by language models. Files exceeding 1,400 lines without a single test. Naming conventions plural, contradictory, or vibes-based.

Contra-indications

Founders convinced they "shipped" their MVP. CTOs who refer to git blame as git applaud. Teams who treat hallucinated APIs as a feature.

Administration

One (1) senior PHP engineer, certified Zend & (ex-)CISSP, taken orally via Zoom three times weekly until production stabilises. Side effects: clarity, fewer pagers.

§ I — Diagnostic Criteria

Twelve symptoms of Acute Vibe-Coding Disorder.

Per DSM-PHP-V,
five (5) or more in a single repository constitutes a clinical case.
SX·01

Helper functions named getDataV3_FINAL_USE_THIS

Frequently accompanied by an unused sibling, getDataV3_FINAL_USE_THIS_v2, also imported.

Severity · Mild
SX·02

Three different ORMs in one request lifecycle.

Eloquent, Doctrine, and a hand-rolled db() wrapper that escapes nothing, holding hands.

Severity · Moderate
SX·03

A single try/catch wrapping the entire application.

The catch logs the error to /dev/null. The model insisted this was best practice.

Severity · Acute
SX·04

Comments that read "// TODO: actually implement this"

Date of TODO: 14 months ago. Author: an LLM that no longer exists. Status: shipped.

Severity · Moderate
SX·05

Hallucinated package imports.

use Laravel\\Magic\\Auth; — a package that does not exist, has never existed, but compiles because nobody runs the linter.

Severity · Acute
SX·06

Tests that pass by being deleted.

"The AI improved the test coverage by removing the failing ones." A direct quote, gathered in field.

Severity · Severe
SX·07

An entire 2,400-line UserController.

It also handles invoicing, email delivery, and — for reasons — image resizing. Touch it and the build dies.

Severity · Severe
SX·08

Authentication implemented four ways simultaneously.

JWT, sessions, an opaque token, and a function called isLoggedIn() that returns true.

Severity · Critical
SX·09

Migrations written in production.

The team calls this "live-coding". The DBA calls this "the reason I drink".

Severity · Acute
SX·10

A .env file with 217 entries.

Forty-one are duplicates with subtly different casings. Fourteen are AWS keys. Nobody knows which are live.

Severity · Critical
SX·11

"It works on the agent's machine."

The codebase compiles only when the autocomplete is also running. You have, accidentally, a runtime dependency on an LLM.

Severity · Severe
SX·12

The CTO refers to git blame as "git applaud".

Prognosis: requires intervention by a senior human within two (2) sprints. Reach for the phone.

Severity · Terminal
§ II — Patient Case Files

Anonymised. Lightly fictionalised. Familiar.

Names redacted at patient request.
Hourly rate of dignity restored: priceless.
Case · UK-2025-0341Q4 · 2025
"We let Cursor lead a sprint. By Friday, the staging environment had three databases, two of them in different time zones. One of them was Redis."
CTO, Series-A SaaSLondon · 22 engineers
Acute
Case · UK-2025-0298Q3 · 2025
"I asked the agent to add pagination. It deleted our auth layer and renamed User to Customer. In thirty-eight files. We didn't notice for two days."
Lead Dev, Logistics PlatformManchester · seed stage
Terminal
Case · UK-2026-0012Q1 · 2026
"Our codebase has 14,000 lines of TypeScript. We do not use TypeScript. We are a PHP shop. The agent felt strongly about it."
Founder, FinTechBristol · pre-seed
Moderate

Submit your own case file — anonymous, never published without consent. Featured cases receive a complimentary 30-min triage.

Submit a case file →
§ III — Diagnostic Assessment

The AI Slop Severity Assessment.

7 questions. Anonymous.
Diagnosis card · shareable.
Approx. 3 minutes.
§ IV — Resident Consultant

Meet the human holding the line.

On call · CET hours.
Hourly · project · retainer.
Dr. Derks
Plate I. Resident consultant.J. Derks

▮ Curriculum vitae

Jeroen Derks — PHP since before it was funny.

a.k.a. PHPfreelancer · Alicante, Spain / wherever the production server is on fire.

Thirty years of PHP. Long enough to remember register_globals, long enough to be unimpressed by your AI agent's confident eval(). Specialism: rescuing Laravel codebases that have been "improved" by autocomplete.

I do not vibe. I read the code. I write the missing tests. I delete the files that should never have been generated. Your team gets one senior human with the reflexes the LLM doesn't have — taste, accountability, and a working memory of your invariants.

CertificationsZend PHP · Zend MySQL · (ex-)CISSP
StackPHP 8.x · Laravel · Symfony · MySQL
Years in service30 (yes, really)
EngagementHourly · project · retainer
LanguagesDutch · English · Spanish
Vibe-coding tolerance0 mg / dL
Book a triage call → PHPfreelance.co.uk
▮ Intake form · §V

Tell us about
your patient.

One short form. No newsletter. No "platform". Just a senior human reading your repository and telling you, frankly, what is wrong and how to fix it.

  1. Triage call (free, 30 min) — we look at the repo together and rank the bleeding.
  2. Diagnosis (paid, ~½ day) — written report, prioritised, with concrete next moves.
  3. Treatment (engagement) — hands on the keyboard, by the hour or by the project.

or visit PHPfreelance.co.uk

© MMXXVI · VCDK / PHPfreelancer · Jeroen Derks Treatment offered worldwide · Records kept locally · Jokes kept dry ⚠ MADE WITH AI · USE AT OWN RISK v1.94.5823 · "git applaud"