You’re surfing tech forums and websites and capture the term “vibe coding” by accident. “What is vibe coding? Is it something a teen hacker comes up with?” you might wonder. Although it sounds like slang or something… unserious, this terminology is in fact invading our world and becoming a crucial part of software development tasks. So, what is it, exactly? Is that a new skill you should acquire? Here in this article, you’ll find all the basics of vibe coding you should know in 2025. Ready? Get started!
What is Vibe Coding, and When Did It First Appear?
Vibe coding is a programming technique that uses large language models (LLMs) to write code on a person’s behalf. In other words, you give AI assistants like GPT-4, Claude, or Copilot some natural language prompts and let them generate an array of coding lines that are used to build a complete application.
The advent and growing adoption of artificial intelligence have turned the role of a software developer from manually coding to guiding, testing, and fine-tuning AI-created code. Also, this advanced technology allows even amateur programmers and non-tech users to build an app without extensive expertise and training in software development.
In fact, using AI to assist our coding tasks isn’t something new. At the end of the 20th century, machine learning advanced and was integrated into coding tools to perform tasks like analyzing code intelligently and enhancing syntax checking. Since the 2010s, deep learning has thrived, improving natural language processing (NLP) and code understanding. This has contributed to the advent of LLM-enabled coding tools (like GitHub Copilot or Tabnine) that can suggest context-aware code based on our input prompts. As of 2024, 82% of developers worldwide leveraged AI to write code.
But it’s not until February 2025 that Andrej Karpathy – a former AI leader at Tesla and now a co-founder at OpenAI – coined the term “vibe coding” on X to describe the act of writing code with AI assistance.
He supposed that vibe coding isn’t actually coding. It’s just about seeing stuff, saying stuff, running stuff, and copy-pasting stuff, and then, the code mostly works. Merriam-Webster, America’s most trusted dictionary, also puts this term into its Slang & Trending category and mentions it as something done in a careless way.
Meanwhile, Simon Willison, Datasette’s creator, offered an interesting perspective on vibe coding. He believed that not all AI-generated programming is vibe coding. Accordingly, if you let LLMs create code responsibly (but without “forgetting that the code even exists” as Karpathy mentioned), this isn’t vibe coding.
How to Vibe Code Your App
You now understand what vibe coding is. So now, do you feel curious about how to vibe code your app with AI assistance? If yes, follow these steps and code your app with AI:
Step 1: Select an AI-powered coding tool that aligns with your technical expertise, cost expectations, and other requirements. Some popular choices include Cursor, Tabnine, GitHub Copilot, and Replit.
Step 2: Clarify your input requirements so that vibe coding tools can understand what they’re intending to build and generate your desired outcomes. Remember that your input prompts should be specific, goal-oriented, and context-relevant.
Here’s an example: Building a simple mobile app screen using React Native that showcases a centered heading saying “Welcome!” in a large, bold, blue font. Add a button below the heading that says “Get Started” with white text and a light red background. When users press the button, they’re navigated to a new screen titled ‘Main’.
Step 3: Run code and refine prompts. After receiving your input requests, the AI coding assistant starts building the fundamental logic or structure of your idea. The AI-generated code might not be perfect on the first try. That’s why you need to run the code and observe how it initially performs. This allows you to discover what isn’t right and needs improvement. Then, you can fine-tune the initial prompts to re-generate better, more polished code.
Step 4: Accept all. Well, you don’t hear it wrong. One noticeable feature of vibe coding is just copy-paste code lines without further comments, reviews, or modifications, even when these code lines are incorrect. All you need to do is accept what AI coding assistants give you all the time until you get a working application that can meet your individual needs.
Is Vibe Coding Truly Effective?
Not really. Although vibe coding sounds interesting, it’s not truly effective in all cases. Wandering blog posts and forums (typically Reddit) where lots of programmers and non-programmers experimented with vibe coding, you’ll see they all come to one conclusion. That’s why vibe coding is more suitable for hobby and reproduction purposes than for professional tasks.
According to Kevin Roose, a New York Times journalist and a non-professional programmer, vibe coding should be used to resolve specific individual needs. For example, he used AI-powered assistants to vibe code many small-scale apps, typically LunchBox Buddy, which analyzes fridge content to recommend suitable food for his packed lunch. However, AI-generated code is limited and contains various errors. Without reviewing the code or having coding-related knowledge, the final deliverable can be prone to defects and hardly work.
Erik Hanchett, a software engineer, also had an interesting experience with vibe coding. He leveraged Amazon Q CLI to develop his personal website. He pretended not to know anything about website development and tried to accept all the code and changes Amazon Q suggested. Everything seemed to work well from the beginning. But after saying ‘yes’ to all the AI-generated changes, Hanchett started spotting some issues, like removing his nuxt-ui module (this action could ruin all his Tailwind CSS in the app).
Despite some issues as mentioned, AI still proves effective and excellent in several coding aspects. Hanchett showed his surprise towards Amazon Q’s ability to create tests for each app page and make modifications itself several times until every test passed without extra prompts. Other engineers like Taher Vohra and Prasad Naik also appreciated vibe coding as an accelerator to help programmers acquire new languages and technologies they don’t know yet.
Three Rules to Vibe Code Properly
Although AI is learning everything very quickly, we have to admit one thing: AI is not perfect (like us). Like a child, AI absorbs every information and knowledge from what it’s taught.
So, if the knowledge input is wrong and incomplete, no wonder that AI-generated outcomes are incorrect accordingly. Not to mention that there are various situations in reality that require problem-solving skills and context awareness to make the best decisions. However, AI hasn’t reached the ability to observe and analyze contexts correctly like human beings.
That’s why, if you want to vibe code your app more properly, follow these rules:
1. Choose a Popular Simple Tech Stack
AI coding tools excel at handling problems that human engineers have already resolved on popular platforms (like GitHub or Stack Overflow) and with popular technologies like React, Tailwind, or Express. Therefore, if you choose to vibe code your app with one of the common tech stacks, the possibility of AI coding tools producing bug-free code is much higher.
2. Be Good at Git
Git plays a crucial role as your safety net when working with AI. As already mentioned, AI is very helpful in coding your desired app. However, this advanced technology can produce bugs, make unexpected changes, or even delete your existing work. That’s why you need to be proficient at Git.
This version control system can temporarily save uncommitted changes and record your code at a specific time. It also allows you to go back to the previous version of your code and create isolated coding lines to work on specific fixes or features without compromising the whole codebase. With all these capabilities, Git can protect your work and help you recover from unexpected changes made by vibe coding.
3. Ask What You Do for Your AI Assistant
Vibe coding is changing the role of software engineers. They’re now playing a role as a product manager, and AI is becoming their powerful, versatile assistant. Don’t ask what AI can do for you, but wonder what you can do for your smart assistant first. In other words, if you want AI to do a good job on your behalf, you have to divide complex requirements into small, highly specific tasks and offer the proper context for AI to address problems effectively.
Is Vibe Coding Our New Future?
Not yet. There’s a truth that vibe coding isn’t a fad. It’s becoming an important part of software development. However, it’s a big mistake if we only rely on coding with vibes, but do not involve human professionals in reviewing AI-generated code. It’s because AI coding assistants and LLMs may create incorrect outcomes that could turn your software development into a nightmare.
In the future, we predict that using AI to write code will become more popular. However, this doesn’t mean AI can completely replace human engineers. You still need software developers to review, test, and modify the code, as well as perform other tasks that LLMs can’t do.
Final Thoughts and Advice for Software Developers
After this article, we expect you to have a comprehensive understanding of what vibe coding is and whether it’s truly effective in practice. Coding with vibes might be funny and amusing, yet it doesn’t prove completely effective in professional tasks. Therefore, only depending on vibe coding without considering human factors can ruin your entire work. Therefore, just consider vibe coding as an AI assistant to support coding tasks and learn new knowledge instead of completely relying on it to do the whole work for you.
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