What is Vibe Coding and Should You Care?

This isn’t a deep article. I only want to help head off possible confusion over this term. I have recently seen “vibe coding” pop up in discussions around AI for code generation. The name is media-friendly giving it some stickiness in the larger non-technical world, always a concern when it comes to anything AI. The original intent is a fast way to prototype web-based apps, particularly the look and feel of the interface. But given a widespread tendency even among those of us who should know better to conflate any specific AI-related idea with everything AI, I offer my take here to save you the trouble of diving down this particular rabbit hole.

A brief summary

This wasn’t a marketing invention. Andrej Karpathy, a guy with serious AI credibility (Open AI and Tesla) came up with the term to describe a method using an LLM-based code generator (voice activated) to describe and change what he wants without worrying about the underlying code generation. It’s a fast way to blow past all the usual distractions, letting the LLM fix bugs, not even having to type LLM prompts, surrendering to the vibe – he will know what he wants when he sees it.

Karpathy stresses that this is a quick and fun way to build throwaway projects, not a way to build serious code. But see above. AI already carries an aura of magic for some. Even a hint that it might let non-experts play the startup lottery must be difficult to resist. There has been abundant criticism of the concept. If some college students are already tempted to let AI write their essays, imagine what would happen if that mindset is let loose on production software (or hardware) projects.

I wrote recently on Agentic/GenAI adoption in software engineering, though in that case still assuming disciplined usage. Vibe coding in that context would be a step too far, indifferent to safety and security, even casual about detailed functionality. Overall – a clever and entertaining idea, in the hands of an expert a quick way to play with prototype ideas. For anyone looking for a shortcut, just a faster way to generate garbage.

In the fast-evolving AI market the websphere is already refining the initial vibe coding proposition. These efforts aim to redirect focus following a public faceplant (unfortunately I can no longer find the link) by a self-admitted non-coding user who launched and announced a vibe-coded app. Said app was immediately bombarded by hackers. Natural selection at work. The (current) new direction presents vibe coding as an adjunct to more conventional LLM-assisted development, not bypassing careful planning and verification/safety/security/reliability testing. These directions still seem to be very webapp-centric, unsurprisingly given the prototyping/human-interface focus of vibe-coding. Even here disastrous mistakes are possible for inexperienced users.

I’m still not convinced. The weakness I see is more in ourselves than in LLMs. Will we always be aware when we are crossing from casual experimentation to disciplined product development? These blending approaches seem designed to make those boundaries more difficult to spot. There are already practical and disciplined ways to exploit AI in development, why not stick to those until we better understand our own limits?

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