Vibe Coding

canonical

Origin: @karpathy (Andrej Karpathy), Feb 2, 2025

Building software with AI by trusting vibes rather than reading or understanding the code. "You fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists." Karpathy's own description: "a shower of thoughts throwaway tweet I just fired off."

Usage

Use as a marker for the 2025 era — the moment LLMs got "too good" for normal coding workflows. Now also used as the foil: what you upgrade from. 'We moved from vibe coding to agentic engineering.'

Mutations & variants

'Are you vibe coding or actually coding?' (productivity discourse skepticism) 'Vibe coding your way to a $10M ARR' (ironic/serious founder takes) 'Vibe coding is tech debt in a hoodie' (anti-vibe-coding counter, Sridhar Vembu type) 'Vibe coding kills Zoho' (Garry Tan's SaaS disruption take)

Cross-platform escapes

Collins Dictionary: official definition in late 2025
Merriam-Webster: flagged as trending term, March 2025
Wikipedia: entry longer than many proper concepts
NYT, Ars Technica, The Guardian: mainstream press within weeks of tweet
Conference slides: staple framing device 2025–2026
Udemy courses, LinkedIn Learning modules

References

Original tweet: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383
Karpathy 1-year retrospective, Feb 2026: 'I still can't predict my tweet engagement basically at all.'

Shelf life: Canonical — will remain in use as a historical marker indefinitely

Still fully active as a term. Karpathy himself graduated it to 'agentic engineering' in Feb 2026, so 'vibe coding' now marks a previous era. Using it without qualification reads as slightly behind. Best used when contrasting: 'the vibe coding era vs. what's happening now.'

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