If you “vibe code” your way through trial and error to an app, it may work.
But if you don’t understand what it’s doing, why it’s doing it and how it’s doing it?
Then you can’t (easily) maintain it.
If you can’t fix bugs or add features, you don’t have a saleable product - you have a proof of concept.

AI tools are useful, but letting the tool do all the driving is asking for the metaphorical car to crash.

This is fantastic.
Tradie doesn’t want to be watched while they work.
I want to learn by watching, so I’ll hire someone else.
We both get what we want.

Sounds like you’re stuck in a worst practices mindset.

Worst/Pragmatic.
If I get a timeline for a feature request, then everything can be scheduled, tested, whitelisted, delivered at a reasonable time.
That’s the rarer event - normally it’s more like “the scale head has died and a technician is on the way to replace it” and whilst I modify the program in question to handle this new input, hundreds of staff are standing around and delivery quotas won’t be met.
Is my position arrogant? This is the job.

Sign your damn releases and have the whitelisting done by cert.

I’ll see if this is possible at the site in question, thank you.

It IS bespoke internal development, not for deployment outside of the facility.
The computers running the software exist only to run this software and have no business talking to the internet at all.
IT is provided by an external third party vendor who operate on an inflexible “best practices dogma”.

In a rapidly churning startup phase, where new releases can and do come out constantly to meet production requirements, this one size fits all mentality is impractical.

If you refuse to whitelist the deployment directory, you will be taking 2am calls to whitelist the emergency releases.

No it can’t wait until Monday at 9am, no there will not be a staged roll out and multiple rounds of testing.

I am more than willing to have a chat; you, me and the CEO.

This requirement is designed to be hard, and as such is a major red flag to me.
What else is this company going to be difficult with?
Can i only get customer support or cancel my account in person, between 9-4 on the 2nd Friday of the month?
I would consider alternatives, if possible.