Vibe coding

What it is

Vibe coding is a way of building programs by stating the task in natural language instead of typing code by hand. You describe what you want, the AI generates and edits the code, and you look at the result rather than at the lines. Karpathy, in the original phrasing: "you fully give in to the vibes… and forget that the code even exists."

Collins defines the term like this:

the use of artificial intelligence prompted by natural language to assist with the writing of computer code.

Where it came from

• 2 February 2025 - Andrej Karpathy (former Director of AI at Tesla, founding engineer at OpenAI) tossed off a "throwaway" tweet about "a new kind of coding I call vibe coding". The post racked up millions of views.
• In his example he mentioned Cursor Composer + Sonnet and voice input (SuperWhisper) - so the phenomenon was tied to specific agentic tools from the start.
• November 2025 - Collins Dictionary named vibe coding its word of the year, cementing the term in everyday language.

Why it took off

• It coincided with a leap in model quality: by 2025 LLMs had gotten good enough that "chatting → a working app" stopped being science fiction.
• It lowered the barrier: non-developers (product managers, marketers, founders) started building prototypes themselves.
• It gave a name to what was already happening in Cursor, Replit, Lovable and v0 - and a named phenomenon spreads faster than a nameless one.

How to apply it now

1. Take an agentic editor (Cursor / Claude Code / Replit Agent) and describe the feature in words, not pseudocode.
2. Work in iterations: "do X" → look at the result → "now Y" - stay at the level of intent.
3. For prototypes and personal utilities, give in to the vibe entirely. For production, switch to stricter modes (specs, review, tests - see the neighboring cards).

What to watch out for

• Karpathy himself and Andrew Ng both stressed that for production, "pure vibes" is risky - you accumulate code nobody understands.
• Without tests and review, vibe coding turns into "15 hours of cleanup" after 1 hour of generation (the classic 2025 complaint).
• The maturity line: personal project - vibes are fine; money or user data - you need a spec, review and security.