Vibecoding: what is it?

The prologue came two years before the term: in January 2023, Karpathy wrote a line later repeated at conferences - "The hottest new programming language - English". Then, on February 2, 2025, he described the working method itself:

Tellingly, a year later Karpathy himself called it a "one-off shower tweet" - yet by then the term had already made its way into dictionaries and Big Tech quarterly-report headlines.

The most frequently cited boundary was drawn by Simon Willison - Django co-founder and author of one of the leading engineering blogs about LLMs:

The figure then rose faster than forecasts: “well over 30%” in April 2025, around half by fall - and 75% of new code at Google Cloud Next in April 2026 (Semafor, April 24, 2026).

An honest footnote: for the industry as a whole, the forecast did not materialize by the deadline - independent analyses noted this in fall 2025. But within Anthropic itself, it has been exceeded: in February 2026, the company’s CPO Mike Krieger said that for most Anthropic products, the share of AI-generated code is “effectively 100%”: Claude writes Claude. The gap between “90% did not happen across the market on average” and “100% among leaders” is itself the best illustration of the moment.

What is vibecoding, in simple terms?

You tell an AI agent what a program should do - in everyday language, as you would a colleague. The agent writes the code; you look at the result (whether it works or not), ask for changes - and repeat until you have a finished product. You do not have to read the code at all: that is what distinguishes it from traditional development.

How is vibecoding different from AI coding with review?

Simon Willison drew the boundary: if an LLM wrote all the code but you reviewed, tested, and understood it, that is not vibecoding but regular development with an AI assistant. Vibecoding is when code is accepted without line-by-line review, based on product behavior.

Do you need to know how to program to vibecode?

For prototypes and personal tools - no: Merriam-Webster explicitly notes that a vibecoder "does not necessarily have to understand how and why the code works." For production systems with other people's data and money - engineering skills still matter: someone has to be responsible for security and reliability.

Why is "vibecoding" written as one word?

In English, the term is two words - vibe coding. In Russian, variants include "vibe-coding," "vibe coding," and the typo "vibecodding" - but there is one canonical spelling: "vibecoding," as one word and with one "d," like "frontend" or "startup": it is shorter, what people search for, and how they pronounce it.

How do you start vibecoding?

Choose an AI agent (the current ranking is in our Index), take on a real small task, and go through the cycle: "describe - get - test by behavior - ask for fixes." Practical guides are in the "Build it yourself" section.

• What programming with AI is called - the full map of terms: agentic engineering (“agent-based development”), CHOP, SDD, and an analysis of the “mom's basement vibecoders” meme.
• AI agent ranking - what people are vibecoding with right now: an index with methodology.
• Tools catalog - agent and platform cards with facts and provenance.
• Build it yourself - guides and hands-on practice: from your first task to a product.
• AI coding news - machine-curated feed: releases, prices, techniques.
• Personal work with the author - private format: 3 months working on your product, admission by application.