You may own less of your vibe-coded app than your AI tool's terms suggest

The US Copyright Office says prompts alone do not make you the author, and we found no ruling that applies this to AI-written code. Five of the eleven AI tools we compare assign their rights in output "if any" on individual plans, most small plans carry no IP cover, and buyers now ask who wrote what. What protects a one-person app today is the code you wrote or reworked, secrecy, contracts and good records.