SlangRising
Vibe Coding
noun
Making software by asking an AI for changes and trying the results, often without reading much of the code it writes.
What does vibe coding mean?
You describe an app, try the version the AI makes, then ask it to move a button or fix an error. Keep doing that long enough and you end up with working software without ever really following the code underneath it. That's the narrower, original meaning of vibe coding. People also use it more loosely to just mean "coding with AI" — and that looser use is where most of the arguments about the term start.
How people use it
I vibe-coded a little birthday countdown, then spent the evening figuring out why every day was Friday.
Example written for this dictionary.
There is often a little pride and a little confession in the phrase: I made this, and I am not entirely sure how it works. It suits the mood of a quick experiment, especially when the result is useful despite being a bit shaky.
Why it matters
Getting something to run can happen a lot faster than actually understanding it — and that gap shows up the moment you need to fix a bug or add a feature nobody planned for. Two people can use the exact same AI tool and end up doing completely different work: one's checking every change as it comes in, the other's just riding the vibes.
Where it came from
Andrej Karpathy introduced the phrase in a February 2025 post about making software while letting the code recede from view. In March, Simon Willison wrote about the distinction between that approach and reviewed AI-assisted programming. Both pieces help explain why people still disagree about what counts.
Source & further reading
Simon Willison: Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding — a March 2025 discussion of the distinction between the original meaning and broader AI-assisted coding.