What is vibe coding? (And how it works)

What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain English, then letting an AI agent write, run and fix the code.

It has three parts:

1. You describe the result you want.
2. An AI agent writes the code and runs it.
3. You look at what came back, and say what to change.

For example, I asked Claude Code for a tool that builds tagged links and shows which Google Analytics (GA4) channel each link lands in. It wrote the tool and ran it, and I tested it.

You never type the code.

The AI handles the programming language, the files and the setup.

The term has two meanings today:

• The strict meaning – you accept what the AI writes without reading the code, the way Andrej Karpathy first described it
• The everyday meaning – any building where you describe the result to an AI in plain English, including people who test and check everything

Simon Willison, the co-creator of Django, draws the line between the two:

Most people who search for vibe coding mean the everyday meaning.

So that's what this guide covers.

What is a vibe coder?

A vibe coder is someone who builds software this way: they describe it, the AI writes it, and they judge the result.

Many vibe coders have never written a line of code.

I'm one of them:

Others are developers who use AI for the parts they'd rather not type.

And when a creator does it to build the tools and systems behind their own business, I call that a vibe creator.

Who coined vibe coding, and why is it called that?

Andrej Karpathy, one of OpenAI's founding members, coined the term on February 2, 2025:

So the "vibe" is the feel of it.

You steer by how the result looks and works, and you let the AI worry about the code underneath.

And the word spread fast:

• February 2, 2025 – Karpathy names vibe coding in a post on X
• March 5, 2025 – Y Combinator's Garry Tan says 25% of its Winter 2025 startups had codebases 95% written by AI
• March 2025 – Merriam-Webster lists vibe coding as slang and trending
• November 6, 2025 – Collins Dictionary names vibe coding its Word of the Year 2025
• February 4, 2026 – Karpathy says professionals are moving to agentic engineering

Why is vibe coding important?

Because building software got cheap enough for one person to do.

For example, here's what changed for me.

From a dev team to doing it myself

I've had my own site since 2013, on WordPress for most of those years.

Apart from a few basic templates, a designer or developer built everything for me.

I never imagined I'd build all of this myself.

Today AI runs my software, my design, my money and everything I publish. I have no tech team and no developers.

My email, checkout, website and community used to run on Kit, ThriveCart, WordPress, ClickFunnels and Circle.

Now everything they did runs on something I built.

And it's fast. I started my free tools page on September 25, 2026. Four days later, it had over 400 tools.

What it would cost with a dev team

So what would all of that cost with a team?

Say each tool took a developer 20 hours to design, build and test. That's quick for a tool with its own page.

And it still adds up to 8,000 hours: about four developers working full time for a year.

At the US median pay for software developers, $135,980 a year, that's over $500,000 in salaries alone.

It doesn't count benefits, a designer, or my sites and business apps.

The AI costs money too, but a fraction of that:

I use Google AI Ultra mostly for NotebookLM and Google's image and video models.

Claude Code does almost all of the building.

Companies see the same shift. Lovable, a browser app builder, said in June 2026 that it had reached $500 million in annualized revenue, with a million new projects a week, TechCrunch reported.

How vibe coding works

Every vibe coding session runs the same loop:

1. You describe what you want in plain English.
2. The AI agent plans it and writes the code.
3. It runs the code and shows you the result.
4. You react: what works, what's wrong, what's missing.
5. It fixes and adds, and you go around again.

The loop is the same in every tool.

What changes is how much the AI knows before you start.

For example, my agents read my rules and brand files first (they live in my AI OS), so they get it right in fewer rounds.

A real example: my UTM builder

Here's that loop on one of my free tools, the UTM builder.

I described what I wanted: a tool that builds tagged links and shows which GA4 channel each link will land in.

Claude Code read Google's own GA4 channel rules and its list of 819 known traffic sources.

Then it built the tool and ran it.

It also found that GA4's source list has no X, Threads, Bluesky or Substack. So a link tagged utm_source=x needs utm_medium=social to land in the social channel.

I never wrote a line of that code.

My job was to know what the tool should do, and to check that it did it.

What can you build with vibe coding?

Almost anything you can describe.

So far, I've built:

• Free tools – over 400 of them, like the AI slop checker and the llms.txt generator
• Websites – navid.me and my other sites, with content from my own CMS
• Business apps – the CMS my posts live in and the checkout my products sell through
• AI skills – the instructions my agents use for YouTube titles and thumbnails, newsletters, X, LinkedIn and SEO

Other creators build real products this way too.

For example, at one of my summits, Jenna Soard showed how she went from selling $3,000 courses to building her own software with vibe coding.

One of her apps, for AI brand photography, turned 51% of its free trials into paying customers.

Vibe coding tools

There are three kinds of vibe coding tools.

Which one should you use? It depends on how close to the code you want to be.

AI coding agents

These work in your project's files.

You describe the change, and they plan it, write the code and run it:

Claude Code

What it is

Anthropic's coding agent: it plans, writes and runs code in your project

Where you use it

Terminal, desktop app, code editors and the web

Codex

What it is

OpenAI's coding agent

Where you use it

Terminal, code editors and ChatGPT

OpenCode

What it is

An open source coding agent, with free models included or any provider you connect

Where you use it

Terminal, code editors and desktop

Hermes Agent

What it is

An open source agent from Nous Research that remembers across sessions and writes its own skills

Where you use it

Your computer or a server, and messaging apps like Telegram

Cursor

What it is

A code editor with AI agents built in

Where you use it

Its own desktop app

Antigravity

What it is

Google's code editor built around AI agents

Where you use it

Its own desktop app

GitHub Copilot

What it is

An AI pair programmer that suggests and writes code in your editor

Where you use it

Code editors like VS Code

Manus

What it is

An AI agent that plans and carries out complex tasks end to end

Where you use it

Your browser

Tool	What it is	Where you use it
Claude Code	Anthropic's coding agent: it plans, writes and runs code in your project	Terminal, desktop app, code editors and the web
Codex	OpenAI's coding agent	Terminal, code editors and ChatGPT
OpenCode	An open source coding agent, with free models included or any provider you connect	Terminal, code editors and desktop
Hermes Agent	An open source agent from Nous Research that remembers across sessions and writes its own skills	Your computer or a server, and messaging apps like Telegram
Cursor	A code editor with AI agents built in	Its own desktop app
Antigravity	Google's code editor built around AI agents	Its own desktop app
GitHub Copilot	An AI pair programmer that suggests and writes code in your editor	Code editors like VS Code
Manus	An AI agent that plans and carries out complex tasks end to end	Your browser

I build almost everything with Claude Code, and I use Codex too.

Browser app builders

These build and host the app for you, in your browser.

So they're the easiest place to start if you've never opened a terminal:

Tool	What it builds
Lovable	Web apps from a chat
Bolt	Web apps from a prompt
Replit	Apps built and hosted by its AI agent
Emergent	Full apps and sites from a prompt, with your domain connected for you
Base44	Full-stack web apps from a description
Anything	Apps from a conversation
Firebase Studio	AI apps, in Google's cloud workspace
Google AI Studio	Apps from a prompt, built with Gemini

Jenna Soard builds with Emergent, and she told my summit audience why:

AI assistants that write code

You can also ask a chat assistant for code and paste it into a project.

It's slower than an agent. But it costs nothing extra if you already pay for one:

Tool	What it is
ChatGPT	OpenAI's assistant, with Codex for building in your files
Claude	Anthropic's assistant, with Claude Code for building in your files
Gemini	Google's assistant, including help with code
Grok	xAI's assistant, including help with code

Whichever you pick, a good prompt makes it better.

For example, my Claude Code prompt generator and Codex prompt generator turn an idea into a task prompt the agent can build from.

How to write a good vibe coding prompt

Most weak vibe coding sessions start with a vague prompt.

For example, "Make me a UTM tool" gets you a guess.

So say who it's for, what goes in, what comes out, and how you'll know it works.

This is the prompt shape I'd start from. Fill in the brackets:

Vibe coding starter prompt
You're a senior developer building a small tool for me. I don't write code, so explain your choices in plain English.

The tool: [what it does, in one sentence]
Who uses it: [who it's for]
What they put in: [text, a file or a link]
What they get back: [the result they see or download]
It works when: [one test I can run myself]

Before you write any code, tell me your plan in 5 steps or fewer and wait for my OK.
Build the smallest version first: one screen that does one job.
When you're done, run it, check it against "It works when", and tell me what you tested.

Is vibe coding the same as no-code?

They overlap.

No-code tools like Zapier or Webflow give you ready-made blocks to arrange.

Vibe coding gives you real code that an AI wrote for you.

That difference shows up later. With no-code, you can only do what the blocks allow.

With vibe coding, you own the code. So you can host it anywhere and change anything you can describe.

Is vibe coding bad?

It's good for some jobs and risky for others.

It's great for prototypes, internal tools, small products and anything you'll use yourself.

But it gets risky when real customers, money or personal data are involved and nobody checks what the AI built.

Here's the trade-off side by side:

And the research shows the risks are real:

Vibe coding best practices

These are the habits that keep a vibe-coded tool safe and working:

• Test it like a visitor – on desktop and phone, in light and dark mode, with real inputs
• Keep secrets on the server – API keys never go in code a visitor can open
• Check the parts that matter – anything that touches payments, logins or personal data gets reviewed, by you, a second AI agent or a developer
• Put limits on AI features – rate limits and daily caps, so nobody can run up your bill
• Turn mistakes into rules – when something breaks, write the fix into your AI OS so the agent doesn't repeat it

Common vibe coding mistakes

And these are the mistakes that waste the most time:

• Starting too big – a full app on day one, when one small tool would teach you more
• Vague prompts – "make me an app" gets you a guess
• Skipping the plan – letting the agent write code before you've agreed on what it will build
• Five changes per round – when something breaks, you can't tell which change did it
• Fixing the same thing twice – a fix you didn't save as a rule comes back next week

Vibe coding vs agentic engineering

A year after he coined the term, Karpathy looked back on it:

His favorite name for that is agentic engineering.

You direct the agents that write the code, and you act as the oversight.

You can start with the vibe, and add the checks as a tool gets real users.

How to start vibe coding

You can build your first tool this week.

Your first 7 days

Here's a day-by-day plan:

I walk through each step with my own setup in how to become a vibe creator.

Final thoughts on vibe coding

Vibe coding lets you build software by describing it.

Knowing what to build, and checking that it works, is still your job.

Keep reading:

• What is a vibe creator? – how creators use vibe coding to build the tools and systems behind their business
• How I use AI – the setup behind everything in this guide
• Free tools – over 400 tools built this way, free to use

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