How we make things now · 2 min read
How "Vibe" Became the Word for AI Coding
You ask for a change, try the result and ask again. The name captures how easy it is to keep going without reading the code.
“Make the button a little smaller”
You describe a page to a coding assistant. It builds something close to what you had in mind. You ask for a smaller button, a different color and a way to save the result. An error appears, so you paste it back into the chat.
There is a rhythm to this: ask, try, react. You can make quite a few decisions about the thing on screen without understanding the code underneath. Vibe is a good word for that experience. You know whether the result feels right, even when you could not explain how it works.
The original joke had a point
Andrej Karpathy introduced vibe coding in a February 2025 post about a way of making software where he could largely stop attending to the code. The phrase fit the pleasure of getting a small project working through conversation, with a willingness to accept rough edges.
It also left room for self-mockery. Saying you vibe-coded something can mean “look what I made” and “please do not ask me to explain all of it” in the same breath.
People use the name differently
The phrase also gets applied to AI-assisted programming in general. That broader usage hides a useful distinction. A developer might use AI for most of the typing while still reviewing every change and checking the design. Another person might judge the project almost entirely by whether the page opens.
Simon Willison made this distinction in a March 2025 essay about the term. The tools can look the same while the amount of understanding and review differs considerably. That difference becomes harder to ignore when the project needs maintenance.
Where an agent fits
Agentic coding describes a tool that can take several steps, such as editing files and running tests. Vibe coding describes a style of working with the result. An agent can be carefully supervised; a simple chatbot can be used casually.
You can enjoy a quick experiment without pretending the distinction has disappeared. The phrase is most useful when it helps explain how something was made. If it only means that AI was involved somewhere, it tells the reader much less.
Sources
Simon Willison: Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding