Vibe coding

In plain language

You describe the program, accept the generated changes and keep going without inspecting the code.

In a sentence

• The prototype was vibe coding because its author accepted every generated edit without reading the diff.
• We stopped vibe coding when the application needed a reviewed security change.

Examples written for this glossary

Usage note

The term describes a particular way of using generated code, rather than every case of AI assisted programming. Its defining behavior is accepting changes without reading the diff.

• Vibe coding

  Origin

  An origin source records where a term or practice came from. Willison quotes Karpathy's February 2025 description of accepting generated changes without reading the diffs and distinguishes it from reviewed AI assisted programming.

  Source: Willison 2025 (opens in a new tab)

See also

• AI slop

  Unwanted content generated with AI, especially unreviewed material that someone shares with people who did not ask for it, so readers receive output nobody checked.

• Technical debt

  Accumulated cost of working with code that was shipped before it was consolidated, making later changes harder until the code is revised.

• Generative AI

  Class of AI models that produces new text, images, audio or other digital content by learning patterns in input data and generating related outputs.