What is a vibe creator? (And how to become one)

What is a vibe creator?

A vibe creator is a creator or founder who builds the tools, sites and systems behind their business with AI, by describing what they want in plain English, without writing a line of code themselves.

You bring the ideas, the taste and the judgment.

The AI writes the code, runs it, and fixes it when you tell it what's wrong.

Five things make someone a vibe creator:

• They build for their own business – tools their audience uses, the site they sell from, the systems they run on
• They describe instead of code – plain English in, working software out
• They ship – what they build goes live on their own site, not into a folder of demos
• They own it – their code, their data and their domain
• They check it – every result gets tested before anyone else sees it

So a vibe creator builds for the business they already have: the audience, the offers and the content.

The rise of the vibe creator

"Vibe creator" grows out of vibe coding.

Andrej Karpathy, one of OpenAI's founding members, named vibe coding on February 2, 2025:

It spread fast.

Merriam-Webster added it to its slang and trending words, and Collins Dictionary made vibe coding its Word of the Year 2025.

Then "vibe" turned into a prefix. Within weeks, marketers were calling AI-run marketing "vibe marketing".

Bia Granja, who co-founded the creator economy company YOUPIX in Brazil, wrote about the vibe creator in April 2025:

In her essay, a vibe creator uses AI to make things with less friction.

I use the word for creators who go one step further and build the tools, sites and systems behind their business.

A year after his first post, Karpathy described what vibe coding becomes when the work matters:

His name for it is agentic engineering.

That second part, the checking, is the one that matters most when the work carries your name.

So a vibe creator needs both: the speed of vibe coding, and the checks of agentic engineering.

Vibe creator vs vibe coder

Both use the same AI agents.

But the goal is different, and so is how much the AI knows about your business.

In its strictest sense, vibe coding means accepting what the AI wrote without reading it.

A vibe creator checks what came back before anyone else sees it.

Vibe creator examples: what I've built

For most of the years since 2013, a designer or developer built everything on my site.

Today I build it myself with AI agents, mostly Claude Code.

Here are 8 examples, all live.

1. My own site, navid.me

My site ran on WordPress for most of those years.

Today navid.me is a site I built with Claude Code, on my own CMS, where I write every post and tool guide. I started it on April 4, 2026, and it has had over 370 commits since.

2. Over 450 free tools

Calculators, generators, checkers, downloaders and converters, each with a guide written from how I use it.

Many of the tools share one screen. For example, one downloader screen runs 30 downloaders, and one image screen runs 26 converters. So a new tool is often a new page on a screen that already works.

And most of them run in your browser, so they cost me nothing per visitor.

Browse the free tools

3. A lead magnet generator

It turns a checklist, a guide, a prompt pack or a video lesson into one interactive page, with light and dark mode, an email gate and your own email platform's signup form.

It's all made in your browser, and I built it in two days.

Make a lead magnet

4. A background remover that runs on your computer

It cuts people, pets and products out of a photo at the photo's full size, and the photo never leaves your computer.

Three AI models download to your browser once, then do the work on your own device. So it costs me nothing to run, however many people use it.

Remove a background

5. A bio generator for 14 platforms

It writes your bio in the shapes the best creators on a platform use, and grades the one you have.

One screen runs 16 bio and headline generators, for Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, GitHub and 10 more platforms. Each one knows its platform's limits, read from the platform's own help pages.

Write your Instagram bio

6. A whiteboard and a diagram maker

The whiteboard is built on Excalidraw, the open source drawing tool, with photos, videos, music, icons, brand logos and presentation frames added. It exports to PNG, PDF, PowerPoint and a web page.

The diagram on it came from my Diagram Maker, which has 32 editable layouts. One click sends a diagram to the whiteboard.

I built the whiteboard in two days, and the Diagram Maker in one.

Open the whiteboard

7. 23 open source MCP servers

An MCP server lets an AI agent like Claude Code use an app for you: read your posts, check your numbers, draft a reply.

I've built 25 of them. 23 are open source on GitHub, for apps like Substack (65 tools), Telegram (74), Mastodon (76), WordPress (42), YouTube (16) and Apple Photos (13).

See them on GitHub

8. My AI OS

My AI OS is the folder of context and skills Claude Code reads before it does anything for me: who I am, my brand, my voice and my offers.

It has 189 skills in 15 plugins today, for YouTube, X, LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts, SEO, writing and more.

See how I use AI

Behind these, my business runs on apps I built too: my own CRM in place of Kit, my own checkout in place of ThriveCart, my own CMS in place of WordPress, and my own members area in place of Circle.

They all live in one dashboard I call HQ, with 303 pages.

Why become a vibe creator?

A lot of my system started as small tools I built for my own work: counting a post before it goes out, tagging links, pulling transcripts, getting pages ready for AI search.

Then I turned the simple versions into free tools anyone can use in a browser.

And three things started to happen.

Your tools bring people to you

Every free tool is a page people search for.

And each one comes with a guide written from how I use it, so someone who came for a calculator meets the rest of my work.

You own what you build

When the software is yours, you decide what it does, what it looks like and what it costs.

Kit, ThriveCart, WordPress, ClickFunnels and Circle all did jobs in my business. Today my own CRM, checkout, CMS, sites and members area do those jobs.

Every build makes the next one faster

What worked on one build becomes a skill in my AI OS, so the agent starts the next build from there instead of from zero.

Building can also pull you away from the work that pays.

So before you build anything, ask whether it will bring people in, save you hours every week, or replace something you pay for.

If it does none of those, skip it.

How to become a vibe creator

Here are the 7 steps I'd follow if I were starting today:

Step 1: Pick one tool you'd use yourself this week

Start with something you do by hand every week.

For example, mine were counting a post before it goes out, tagging links and pulling transcripts.

Keep it small.

A tool you use yourself gets tested every day, and you already know what "working" looks like.

Good first builds for a creator: a calculator for your niche, a checklist your clients fill in, or a generator that turns your framework into a template.

Step 2: Set up Claude Code or Codex

There are two kinds of tools for this.

Browser builders like Lovable, Replit, Bolt and Google AI Studio build an app in a browser tab. Vibecode does it on your phone. They're the easiest way to try it.

AI agents like Claude Code and Codex work in the files on your own computer. That's where I build almost everything, because the agent can reach my sites, my CMS and my AI OS.

The easiest way in is the desktop app. Claude Code runs in the Claude desktop app on Mac, Windows and Linux, so you never have to open a terminal. Codex runs inside the ChatGPT desktop app.

If you'd rather use the terminal, this is Anthropic's official install for Mac, Linux and WSL:

Terminal
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

And for Windows, in PowerShell:

PowerShell
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Then go to the folder you want to work in, and start it:

Terminal
cd my-first-tool
claude

The first time, you sign in with your Claude account. Claude Code needs a paid plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise) or an API account. I use two Max plans.

For Codex, the terminal version installs with npm:

Terminal
npm install -g @openai/codex

Step 3: Give the AI your context

Every AI agent starts a session knowing nothing about you.

Context is what turns a generic build into yours: your voice, your brand, your offers and your audience.

I keep mine in my AI OS.

Every agent reads a rules file first (CLAUDE.md for Claude Code, AGENTS.md for Codex), then the files about me, my company, my voice and my brand. I show how mine works in how I use AI.

Two of my free tools help here. The DESIGN.md generator writes the design rules your agent follows, and the Claude Code prompt generator turns an idea into a task prompt.

Step 4: Describe the result, then build the smallest version

Describe what the finished tool does for the person using it, in plain English.

Say who it's for, what they put in, what they get back, and how you'll know it works.

Then ask for the smallest version first: one screen that does one job. Add to it once that works.

Step 5: Test it in the browser yourself

Open it and use it the way a visitor would: on your laptop and your phone, in light and dark mode, with real inputs.

When something is off, describe what you saw.

For example, "The button does nothing on my phone" is enough for the agent to find it.

Before any of my tools goes live, it gets opened in a real browser.

Step 6: Put it on your site

Give each tool its own page with a guide under it: what it is, who it's for and how to use it.

That's how all of my free tools work.

The guide is what search engines and AI assistants read to understand the tool.

Step 7: Save what worked as a skill

A skill is a set of saved instructions your agent loads when a job matches it.

After a build, save the steps that worked and the corrections you had to make.

For example, my AI OS has skills for YouTube titles and thumbnails, newsletters, X, LinkedIn and SEO, so none of those jobs starts from a blank page.

The tools I use

Here's the stack behind everything above:

Tool	What I use it for
Claude Code	My main AI agent, for building and running almost everything
Codex	My second AI agent
GitHub	The code for every project. My MCP servers, CLIs and some other tools are open source there
Supabase	The database, logins and file storage behind my sites, my CMS and HQ, and the data for every free tool
Vercel	Hosting for my sites
Cloudflare	Images, domains and DNS
Amazon SES	Every email my CRM sends
Stripe	Checkout on my sites

Vibe creator myths

Here are the myths I hear most about vibe creators:

Common vibe creator mistakes

These are the mistakes that waste the most builds:

• Building for no one – decide who it's for and what they put in before you open the agent
• Asking for everything at once – one prompt for a full app gets you a pile of half-working features, so ask for one screen first
• Skipping the phone check – many visitors will open your tool on a phone, so test it there before it goes live
• Pasting keys into the code – API keys belong on the server, where no visitor can read them
• Rebuilding what you could buy – if a tool won't bring people in, save you hours or replace a bill, skip it
• Starting every build from zero – save what worked as a skill, or you'll explain the same things every session

What can go wrong, and how I handle it

Vibe coding has a reputation, and some of it is earned.

The research shows it:

Sabrina Ramonov puts the limit this way:

Here's what I do so my tools don't end up in those numbers:

• Nothing publishes as me unseen – agents draft and build, and I decide what goes out under my name
• Secrets stay on the server – API keys never sit in code a visitor can open
• The browser comes first – when a tool can run in your browser, it does, so there's less to leak and nothing to pay for per visitor
• AI features get limits – tools that call an AI model get rate limits and daily caps
• Every build gets opened in a browser – on desktop and phone, in light and dark mode, before it goes live
• Mistakes become rules – when something goes wrong, the fix goes into my AI OS, so the agent doesn't repeat it

Final thoughts on becoming a vibe creator

Building the tools, sites and systems your business runs on is now a creator skill.

AI handles the code. The judgment stays yours: what's worth building, what's true, and what goes out under your name.

Keep reading:

• What is vibe coding? – where the term came from, every tool worth knowing, and what it would cost with a dev team
• How I use AI – the setup behind everything in this guide
• Free tools – over 450 tools I built this way, free to use

Then pick one tool you'd use this week, and build it.