What vibe coding is.

The art of coding by feel — describing what you want to AI and going with the flow. Andrej Karpathy coined the term; it's how many people first experience AI-assisted development.

The origin

"There's a new kind of coding I call 'vibe coding', where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists."

— Andrej Karpathy, former head of AI at Tesla, co-founder of OpenAI. February 2025.

What vibe coding looks like

A session sounds like this:

You: Make me a dashboard with charts showing sales data
AI:  *generates 200 lines of React + Chart.js*
You: Looks good. Make the colours nicer
AI:  *modifies colour palette*
You: Add a date filter
AI:  *adds date picker + filter logic*
// You never read the implementation in detail
// It works. Ship it.

Pros and cons

When it works

• Prototyping. Get a working demo in minutes, not days.
• Personal projects. Low-stakes code where speed matters more than perfection.
• Learning. Explore new frameworks and libraries by building with them.
• Ideation. Quickly test if an idea is worth pursuing.
• Non-developers. Lets designers, PMs, and founders create software.

When it doesn't

• Production systems. Code you don't understand is code you can't debug.
• Security-sensitive apps. You can't spot vulnerabilities you don't read.
• Complex architecture. AI often generates brittle, tightly-coupled code.
• Team codebases. Others need to maintain what was vibed into existence.
• Scaling. Vibe-coded projects become unmaintainable past a certain size.

The evolution: from vibes to agents

Vibe coding is the first step. Agentic development is where the journey leads — same speed, structured gates, code you can actually maintain. Read next: what agentic development is.

Frequently asked

Is vibe coding the same as agentic development?

No. Vibe coding is informal and acceptance-based — you take what the AI gives you. Agentic development is structured, with specialised agents, quality gates, and human oversight. Vibe coding is a starting point; agentic development is the professional evolution.

Is it good for production software?

For prototypes and personal projects, it can be effective. For production software that needs to be maintained, secure, and reliable, vibe coding alone is risky. You need the quality gates and structure that agentic development provides.

What are the risks?

Code you don't understand, security vulnerabilities you can't spot, technical debt that accumulates silently, and fragile architectures that break when requirements change.