What Is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding means building software by describing what you want to an AI in plain language, then accepting the code it writes without reviewing it. Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI, coined the term on 2 February 2025, and Collins Dictionary named it Word of the Year 2025. The idea is speed over understanding: you steer by results, not by reading the code.

Where did "vibe coding" come from?

"Vibe coding" comes from a single post by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025, and the meaning has sharpened since. He described letting the AI drive and barely watching the code.

Karpathy called it a style where you "fully give in to the vibes … and forget that the code even exists" (quoted by Merriam-Webster, updated June 2026). The phrase caught on fast as AI coding tools improved.

Developer Simon Willison later drew the important line. He defines vibe coding as "building software with an LLM without reviewing the code it writes" (19 March 2025). He stresses that it is not the same as writing code with an AI's help.

That distinction is the whole thing. Using AI to write code you still read, test, and understand is ordinary professional work. Vibe coding is the version where you skip that step.

How is vibe coding different from AI-assisted coding?

Vibe coding and AI-assisted coding both use an AI to write code, but they split on one question: does a human review the result? One keeps a person responsible for the code; the other does not.

Approach	Who reviews the code	Best suited to
Vibe coding	Nobody reads it closely	Throwaway prototypes, personal tools, quick experiments
AI-assisted coding	A developer reads, tests, and edits	Production software, client websites, anything people rely on

Source: definitions from Simon Willison and Collins Dictionary, 2025.

As Merriam-Webster's definition puts it, in vibe coding the coder "does not need to understand how or why the code works," and accepts that some bugs will be present. That trade is fine for a weekend experiment and risky for anything a business runs on.

What is vibe coding good for?

Vibe coding is genuinely useful for throwaway work where nobody depends on the result. A quick prototype, a personal script, or a rough demo can come together in an afternoon.

The speed is real. You can get from an idea to a working screen faster than writing it by hand.

The catch is everything you skipped. Unreviewed code can carry security holes, cause poor performance under real traffic, or fail in ways nobody on the team can explain, because nobody wrote or read it. Those are exactly the faults a website audit looks for after the fact.

Should you vibe-code your business website?

For a site your business depends on, we think pure vibe coding is the wrong tool. The real question is not whether the AI can produce something that looks right on day one. It is whether anyone can safely fix it on day ninety.

A pattern we see is that most site emergencies trace back to a change nobody fully understood. It is usually an outdated plugin or an edit no one can explain, rarely a clever hack. Code that no human has read makes that failure mode the default.

This is the same reason small updates break websites: when no one owns an understanding of the code, every change is a gamble. AI still has a real place in building a business site, speeding up work that a developer then reviews, tests, and takes responsibility for. The same caution applies to AI features you add later, like a chatbot. That line between a fast build and a fragile one is the point of asking whether AI can build your website.

Frequently asked questions

Who invented the term "vibe coding"?

Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI, coined it in a post on 2 February 2025. He described a style of coding where you lean on the AI and stop tracking the code itself. The term spread quickly and was named Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year that November. It now appears in Merriam-Webster's slang listings as well.

Is vibe coding the same as using AI to help you code?

No, and the difference is the whole point. Using AI to help you code means you still read, test, and understand what it produces. Vibe coding means accepting the code without that review. One is ordinary professional practice; the other trades understanding for speed and suits only low-stakes projects.

Is vibe coding bad?

Not by itself. For a throwaway prototype, a personal tool, or a quick experiment, skipping the code review costs you little. It becomes risky when the output goes into something people rely on, like a business website or an app handling customer data. There, an unreviewed bug or security hole can do real damage.

Can you vibe-code a whole business website?

You can produce something that looks finished, but we would not rely on it. A business site needs to stay secure, load fast, and survive edits months later. Code that nobody has reviewed tends to fail on exactly those points. AI is far safer used to speed up a build that a developer still checks and maintains.

What are the risks of vibe coding?

The main risks are hidden security flaws, poor performance under real traffic, and code no one can maintain. Because the point is not reading the code, problems stay invisible until something breaks. On a site that matters, the time saved upfront is often lost later fixing faults nobody understands.

Building fast without building fragile

Storming Solutions builds and maintains websites for Malaysian businesses, and we use AI heavily in that work, on code we still read, test, and stand behind. We will not hand a client a site that no one can safely maintain, however quickly it was generated.

Thinking of turning an AI-built prototype into a real website? Message us on WhatsApp for an honest look, read what goes into a solid tech stack, or talk to us about web development.