Vibe coding

Vibe coding is programming by talking to an AI: you tell it what you want in plain language, it writes the code, you test it and ask for changes, barely reading what it generates. The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy, one of the founders of OpenAI, in early 2025, and it has stuck as the name for this way of building programs through conversation.

It works surprisingly well for prototypes, personal tools and simple websites, and it has opened the door to lots of people who had never programmed. What's misleading is thinking you no longer need judgement. When something fails and you don't understand the code, you depend on the AI to fix it, and sometimes it fixes one thing and breaks another. It can also slip in security flaws, like passwords written inside the code, without warning you. It isn't the same as a programmer who uses AI and reviews every line: with vibe coding you trust the result.

On the blog I put it to the test in two real cases: a website, in "I built a website with the help of artificial intelligence", and a tool of my own, in "I built my own tool without being a programmer". There I tell you how it went and where it took more than good vibes. If you fancy trying it, start with something small that only you will use; it's the best place to make mistakes.