Vibe Coding

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI generate the code, without needing to understand the technical details of the output. Coined by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025, the term captures a workflow where you steer with intent and iteration rather than writing code yourself. It works well for rapid prototyping, though the tradeoff is that projects built this way can become hard to maintain as they grow in complexity.

The Simple Version

Vibe coding is when you talk to an AI and say “build me a website with a blue header and a contact form” and it just… does it. You describe the vibe. The AI writes the code. You don’t need to know what language it’s using or how the code works under the hood. You’re steering with intent, not syntax.

The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy in 2025, and it captured something a lot of people were already doing but didn’t have a name for. Instead of learning a programming language first and building later, you describe what you want and iterate based on what you see.

Why It Matters

Vibe coding is what makes AI-assisted development accessible. It’s the on-ramp. You don’t need to know HTML, JavaScript, or how a framework works. You just need to be able to describe what you want clearly enough for the AI to build it.

The limitation is sustainability. Vibe coding works brilliantly for prototypes and quick experiments. But as projects grow, the lack of structure can create problems. The AI makes choices you don’t understand. Technical debt accumulates invisibly. One session’s output conflicts with the next. That’s when you need to evolve from vibe coding toward something more structured, like agentic coding.

How It’s Used on This Site

This site started as vibe coding. The original version was built with Lovable, a tool that generates entire websites from a description. “Build me a professional portfolio with a dark navy theme, experience timeline, and blog.” It worked. But over time, the limitations became clear: no control over the HTML structure, limited SEO options, and a codebase that was hard to modify.

The migration to Astro was the shift from vibe coding to agentic coding. Same person, same project, but with an architecture (PLAN.md, CLAUDE.md, structured phases) that makes the results sustainable.