What is vibe coding?
Definition
Vibe coding is building software by telling an AI tool what you want in plain language and letting it write the code, often without needing to understand how that code works. Merriam-Webster defines it as "writing computer code in a somewhat careless fashion, with AI assistance".
Checked: 2026-10-29 (Beijing time) · Sources
Where the term comes from
Merriam-Webster says the term is believed to have been coined by Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI, in a post on X on 2 Feb. 2025: "There's a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists."
The same entry notes that in vibe coding the person often has to accept that some bugs and glitches will be present, and that the verb form is "vibe code".
Examples
- A first web app: you type "a habit tracker with a login page and a weekly chart" into a chat-to-build tool such as Lovable, click through the result, and describe each bug back to the AI instead of fixing the code yourself.
- A small browser game: you open Cursor with a rules file from our browser game rules template, ask the agent for a playable prototype, and keep prompting until it feels right.
The risk is the part Merriam-Webster mentions: code you never read can hide bugs. When a vibe-coded project breaks, our rescue prompt helps an agent diagnose it, and AI code review catches problems before you commit.
Related tools on this site
- Lovable: Chat-to-build tool for websites and web apps, aimed at people without technical knowledge.
- Bolt: AI-powered website and app builder for websites, apps and prototypes.
- v0 by Vercel: Vercel's AI assistant to design, iterate on and ship full-stack web apps.
- Replit: Browser-based IDE with Replit Agent for building and deploying apps from prompts.
- Cursor: AI coding agent and editor: hand off coding tasks to agents that turn ideas into code.
- Claude Code: Anthropic's agentic coding tool: understands your codebase, edits files, runs commands in the terminal or IDE.
Related pages
- Best AI for vibe coding
- Rescue prompt for a project an AI broke
- AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md starter
- All glossary terms
Sources
- Merriam-Webster: vibe coding (slang and trending). Checked: 2026-10-29.
We only state facts we checked on the linked sources on the dates shown. Found a mistake? Email jazz.fanpeng@mail.grokbot.com.