Vibe coding
Software development style where the engineer describes intent in natural language and an AI agent writes, edits, and runs the code with minimal manual review. Coined by Andrej Karpathy in February 2025 in a tweet describing the shift from typing code to guiding an agent.
Background
Vibe coding is a workflow in which a developer treats a large language model as the primary author of code, providing high-level direction ("vibes") rather than line-by-line instructions. The agent generates code, runs it, observes results, and iterates until the goal is achieved. The term comes from Andrej Karpathy's February 2025 post in which he described "forgetting that the code even exists." Vibe coding is contrasted with traditional pair-programming where the human still types most of the code, and with low-level autocompletion where the AI only suggests tokens.
Tools that use it
- 01→Lovable
Browser-based AI app builder that generates full-stack React + Supabase apps from natural language.
- 02→Aider
Open-source CLI coding agent that pair-programs in your terminal and commits to git automatically.
- 03→Claude Code
Anthropic's official CLI agent for Claude — runs in the terminal, edits files, executes commands, and ships PRs.
- 04→Windsurf
AI code editor by Codeium with Cascade agent for autonomous multi-step coding tasks.
- 05→Cursor
AI code editor forked from VS Code with built-in agent, multi-file edits, and tab-completion.