What happened
On November 6, 2025, Collins Dictionary named "vibe coding" its word of the year (CNN). Andrej Karpathy coined the term back in February 2025: a style of development where a human describes what they want in plain language and the AI writes the code — to the point where the author "forgets that the code even exists."
Collins noted that the term "resonated far beyond Silicon Valley" and points to a broader cultural shift — AI-assisted everything in everyday life (Collins).
Why it matters
A word of the year is a marker that the practice is no longer niche. In twelve months "vibe coding" went from a Karpathy tweet to a dictionary entry: non-programmers started shipping working apps, and the tooling industry (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Lovable) grew into a multibillion-dollar market.
What it means for vibe coding
Legitimizing the term settles the "this isn'''t serious" argument: it is now a recognized methodology with its own tools, patterns and risks. A good moment for a reminder: vibe coding is not a licence to drop engineering — review, tests and security still sit with the human.