Vibe Coding
Vibe coding is a term popularized by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025 for a mode of working with AI coding agents in which the developer iterates by describing what they want, accepting outputs, and running them — reviewing observed behavior rather than reading every line of generated code. It works well for prototypes, throwaway scripts, internal tools, and exploratory work where the cost of a hidden defect is low. It breaks down for production systems, code that touches money or personal data, and code that another engineer will later have to maintain. Vibe coding sits opposite spec-driven development on a stakes-versus-velocity spectrum, and most teams use a mix depending on what is being built.
Example
A solo developer asks a coding agent to "make this dashboard load faster." The agent inspects the route, adds a caching layer, and ships a diff. The developer skims the change, runs the dev server, sees the page render in roughly half the time, and merges — without reading the cache-invalidation logic in detail. The same developer would not work this way on the billing service, where each change is reviewed line by line.
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