Vibe coding
What is Vibe coding?
Vibe coding is building software by describing it in words for AI to write the code, without writing any code yourself.
Andrej Karpathy coined it in February 2025, and Collins Dictionary made it word of the year later that year. A business owner can build an order page or a price calculator in an afternoon; but AI-written code can still be buggy or insecure if nobody checks it.
Vibe coding in a shop
Build a cake order page with a delivery date picker in one evening; before taking real money, have someone technical review it.
How does Vibe coding work?
- 1You describe what you want in words: "a cake order page, choose a cake, choose a delivery date, email it to the shop".
- 2The AI tool writes the code, builds the interface and runs it for you to see.
- 3You say what to change; the AI edits the code without you reading every line.
- 4When it works, you put it online; before it takes real money, have someone technical check it.
What a shop or café can use it for
- Building a simple order page or product landing page in an afternoon.
- Internal tools: wholesale price calculators, delivery slips, collecting orders from spreadsheets.
- Trying an idea quickly before paying someone to build the real version.
What to watch out for
- AI-written code can have security holes: do not let it handle payments or customer data unchecked.
- Without understanding the code it is hard to fix when it breaks: keep your descriptions and working versions.
- Never paste passwords or API keys into a chat with an AI tool.
Quick questions
Yes, for small tools and simple pages. Anything touching money or customer data still needs a technical person to check it before real use.
Andrej Karpathy named it in February 2025; later that year Collins Dictionary made "vibe coding" its word of the year.
It lets non-specialists build small things and helps programmers work faster, but design, security and accountability still need people who know the craft.
Sources
The dated facts on this page come from the original sources below.
- Andrej Karpathy (X)
There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding” - Collins Dictionary
Collins Word of the Year 2025
Keep learning beyond the glossary
Read next
- BasicsGenerative AIGenerative AI is the kind of AI that makes new content, such as text, images, voices or video, from a short description.
- BasicsLarge language model (LLM)A large language model (LLM) is the text brain behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude: it predicts the most likely next word, one word at a time.
- Risks and safetyGuardrailsGuardrails are hard rules around AI so it does not say or do things outside its remit, such as giving a bigger discount than allowed.