What is 'Vibe Coding'? (And Why It's Taking Over)

A few months ago, Andrej Karpathy posted a tweet that made the rounds.

He described a style of coding where you write prompts, not code. You describe what you want, the AI writes it, and you just... accept it. You don't scrutinize every line. You trust the vibe.

He called it "vibe coding."

I read that and thought, "Oh no, I've been doing this for six months."

What It Actually Means

Vibe coding is NOT just "using Copilot."

It's a mentality shift.

Old way: I type every character. I memorize syntax. I am the programmer.

Vibe way: I describe the outcome. The AI writes the implementation. I become the editor.

It's like going from handwriting a novel to dictating it to a very competent ghostwriter. You still control the story. You just stopped caring about spelling.

The Tools That Made This Possible

This didn't exist three years ago. Now it's everywhere:

Cursor (the editor with Composer): It's VSCode, but the AI actually understands your codebase. You can say "refactor this function to use async/await" and it just... does it.

Replit Agent: You can build entire apps from your phone now. You describe the app. It writes the code. It deploys it. Seriously.

v0 / Bolt.new: You describe a UI component. It generates the React code. You copy-paste it into your project. It takes ten seconds.

"But Doesn't That Make You a Worse Programmer?"

This is the fear.

If you don't write code by hand, don't you forget how to actually code?

Maybe.

But here's the thing: I don't remember how to long-divide numbers either. I haven't done that by hand since 6th grade. I use a calculator.

Am I "bad at math" because I use a calculator? I would argue I'm better at math because I spend my energy on understanding the problem, not on arithmetic.

Vibe coding is the same idea. You become an architect, not a bricklayer.

Where It Breaks Down

Let me be real: vibe coding is not for everything.

If you're debugging a race condition in a distributed system? You need to understand every line.

If you're writing performance-critical code? The AI will write something that works but might be slow.

If you're in a high-security context? You can't just "trust the vibe" on cryptography.

But for CRUD apps? Landing pages? Admin dashboards? Vibe all day.

Axonix Was Built For This

When I designed tools like the Flexbox Playground, I was aiming for the same philosophy.

You shouldn't have to memorize justify-content: space-between. You should drag a slider, see the result, copy the code.

Visual tools are proto-vibe-coding. They've been around for years.

The AI just made it work for everything else.

How to Start

If you're curious:

1. Download Cursor. It's free.
2. Open any project. Press Cmd+K.
3. Describe what you want. Hit Enter.
4. Watch it happen.

You'll feel weird the first time. Like you're cheating.

But you're not cheating. You're just coding in 2026.