WTF is Vibe Coding?
Building software by describing what you want to an AI and accepting its code without closely reading it.
TL;DR
You talk to the AI, it writes the code, you run it, and if it breaks you paste the error back. You "forget the code exists". Great for prototypes and personal tools; risky for anything that must be secure or maintained.
How it works
The original meaning is specifically about not reviewing the generated code. That distinguishes it from AI-assisted engineering, where a developer still reads, tests and owns every change. The term has since broadened in casual use to mean any heavy reliance on AI coding agents, which causes some confusion.
Origin
- Coined / introduced by
- Andrej Karpathy
- When
- 2 Feb 2025
- Story
- Coined in a post on X; it spread so fast it became a dictionary word of the year in 2025.