What I Learned After 320k Views

Less than 48 hours ago, I posted to Reddit about the DocuSign lawsuit, vibecoding and compliance. I thought I might get a few nods from technical folks interested in compliance or perhaps some folks defending vibecoding. Instead, the post hit over 320,000 views, 383 upvotes, and 793 shares and a really healthy discussion. See the original post here. 

I want to share what I learned.

1. E-Signatures are easy, but there’s more

One comment put it perfectly:

"The signature is just the surface. The real product is the trust, auditability, and legal defensibility that comes with it."

Exactly. Signing a PDF is easy. Complying with ESIGN and UETA is stupidly easy. Even an emoji in an email can count as an electronic signature or the classic /s/ + Your Name.

However, there’s more to e-sign software than just the e-signature part.

2. Vibecoding gets you the frontend, not the infrastructure or security

You can vibecode a signing flow that looks legit. Tools like Claude Code can generate React flows, API scaffolding and hash the document with self-signing certs. That’s not the hard part. 

The hard part is:

• Getting a real X.509 cert from a trusted CA, not a self-signed cert
• Understanding what counts as a legal signature under different contexts
• Capturing meaningful audit trails, attribution, and intent
• Securing and managing private keys, HSMs, timestamps, and chain of custody
• And of course CCPA, HIPAA, FERPA, SOC2, etc. 

3. The market doesn’t fully understand what DocuSign actually sells

A few people commented that DocuSign is "just branding" or that the lawsuit was "PR theater." But that misses the point. E-sign solutions aren't just software. They're trusted intermediaries.

"You can't vibecode a company"

That comment, meant as a dunk, is actually right. You can't vibecode a web of enterprise relationships, audit frameworks, trust certifications, and infrastructure. I think particularly in this age of AI SaaS, founders will find out the hard way that it’s WAY easier to build a product than to build a company.

4. Typed signatures are legally valid but sometimes rejected anyway

A huge part of the discussion focused on typed signatures, like "/s/ John Smith." In other words, why vibecode anything if you can already sign something electronically for free without SaaS at all?

I posted a comment walking through case law where typed signatures have been both upheld and rejected. TL;DR:

• Typed names can be valid, even via email and even when there’s an agreement to wet sign and it’s not followed
• But only if intent, attribution, and identity are clearly established
• Even with audit trails, if you can’t support the above or provide expert testimony, they can be thrown out

So again, the UI is not the product. The infrastructure and the domain knowledge is.

Final Thought

The UI is easy. The trust is hard. Vibecoding is real, but so is liability. You can ship an MVP, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready to be sued.

And as someone else said:

"Good luck vibe coding legaltech and compliance."

‍