Vibe Coding: When AI Meets Creativity
by Morteza on 7/14/2025
Remember when “pair programming” meant two humans arguing over whether to use tabs or spaces?
Yeah, me neither.
Because now we’ve entered the vibe coding era, where your coding partner is an LLM, you mostly talk in half-formed ideas, and somehow, code happens.
If you’ve ever said “let me just vibe something out” and ended up with a working prototype built entirely through prompts… congratulations, you’re already a vibe coder.
What Is Vibe Coding?
Vibe coding is not a state of mind.
It’s not even a dev style.
It’s a full-on creative partnership between you and AI, where you stop typing line-by-line and start thinking in goals, gestures, and feelings.
As Andrej Karpathy, a leading AI researcher, coined it in February 2025:
“Fully giving in to the vibes, embracing exponentials, and forgetting that the code even exists.”
You throw out a thought, “Build me a focus timer that locks my screen if I check Twitter, or, oh right, X now!” and the AI starts sketching out components, timers, and a browser blocklist. You adjust the flow, reword a prompt, hit deploy. It’s not code-first. It’s idea-first. And it feels like magic.
But... Why Now?
Because the tools finally caught up with the dream.
- AI dev assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Amazon Q) are now legit pair programmers.
- Deployment is one command (thanks, Vercel/Netlify).
- Design systems are pre-built (shadcn/ui, Radix).
- You can ship MVPs with zero boilerplate, zero config, and zero shame.
It’s fast, forgiving, and dare I say fun.
YC says ~25% of their startups have codebases that are 95% AI-generated. Think about that. Entire companies, launched by vibes? SORRY WHAAAT!!
What It Feels Like
Let me paint the picture:
- You open your editor with no plan.
- You prompt: “Build me a mood-based to-do list that plays lo-fi when I'm productive.”
- LLM spits out a React app, a playlist integration, and a modal.
- You think, “Close enough.”
- You hit deploy.
That’s vibe coding.
It’s not about architecture. It’s about feel.
Like jazz, but the saxophone writes CSS transitions.
When It’s Awesome
- Prototyping: Build fast, break nothing (yet ;) ).
- Creative tools: Personal automations, side projects, indie SaaS.
- Learning: Reverse-engineer the generated code. You’ll learn more than watching 8 hours of YouTube tutorials.
- Idea shaping: When you’re not sure what you want to build, but you’ll know it when you see it.
But Beware of Vibe Decay
Vibe coding has limits. Let’s not pretend it’s replacing sound engineering anytime soon.
Here’s what can go wrong:
- No structure: Scaling vibe-coded projects can feel like refactoring spaghetti with blindfolds.
- Overtrusting AI: It’ll write confident code... that's wrong. Like an intern with swagger.
- Security? Testing? LOL. If you didn’t prompt for it, it probably doesn’t exist.
And when you vibe too far without stopping to think, you might end up with a product that looks cool but breaks in six ways on Safari or IE.
So, Should You Vibe?
Of course! but with boundaries.
Here’s my personal rule:
Vibe first, build solid later.
Use vibe coding to get momentum. Use your brain to make it production-grade. Think of AI like an idea amplifier, not a shortcut to skip fundamentals.
Because at the end of the day, vibes don’t scale. But good systems do.
Conclusion
Vibe coding isn’t hype! It’s a glimpse into a future where building software feels less like engineering and more like composing music. The tools are finally playful again.
If you've ever wanted to build something but got stuck on setup, maybe it's time to stop coding by the book, and start coding by the vibe.
Hit "new prompt."
Turn up the lo-fi.
See what happens.
Cheers.