What Is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want to an AI coding tool and iterating on what it generates instead of writing every line yourself; the term was coined by Andrej Karpathy in February 2025, and VibeKing lists 2,620 apps built this way.

Vibe coding, defined

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want to an AI coding tool in natural language, running the code it generates, and steering it with further prompts instead of writing and reviewing every line by hand. The developer's attention moves from the code to the result: you run the app, see what is wrong, and describe the fix. Errors get pasted back into the tool rather than debugged by hand.

The phrase comes from a post by Andrej Karpathy on X in February 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.Andrej Karpathy, X, February 2025

The term spread fast enough that Collins English Dictionary chose vibe coding as its Word of the Year for 2025. On VibeKing, "vibe-coded" is used in the broad sense: an app whose maker built it primarily by prompting AI coding tools.

Vibe coding vs AI-assisted coding

Both use AI, so the two get conflated. The useful distinction is who reads the code: in AI-assisted coding the developer still reviews every change, while in vibe coding the human reads the running result, not the diff. The side-by-side comparison is in the At a glance panel above.

The tools people vibe code with

Any large language model can vibe code through a chat window, but the practice took off with tools that run, edit and deploy code on your behalf. These are the tools VibeKing tracks; the At a glance panel above lists each one with how many listings state it.

12 real vibe-coded apps

The At a glance panel above lists 12 live VibeKing listings with what each does, its category, the build tool when the maker states it, upvotes and liveness status. Click through to any app page for the maker, the listed date and a structured facts table.

Where vibe coding falls short

• Unread code is unreviewed code. Security mistakes such as exposed keys, missing auth checks and injection bugs ship easily when nobody reads the diff. Anything that handles money or personal data needs a human review pass.
• Debugging by re-prompting has a ceiling. When the model cannot fix a bug from the error message alone, the developer has to understand the code after all, and by then the codebase can be large and unfamiliar.
• Maintenance is the hidden cost. Generated code tends toward duplication and inconsistent structure, which is fine for a weekend project and painful for a product with paying users.
• Prompts are not specs. The tool builds what you described, not what you meant. Small, testable steps beat one giant prompt.

How to start vibe coding

1. Pick a tool that can run code, not just write it: an agentic editor such as Cursor or Claude Code, or a hosted builder such as Replit, Lovable or Bolt.
2. Describe one small feature at a time, run it, and paste errors straight back into the tool.
3. Commit to version control at every working checkpoint so a bad prompt is a revert, not a rewrite.
4. Before anyone else uses it, read the parts that handle auth, payments and user data, or have a reviewer do it.
5. Ship it, then list it on VibeKing with the tool you used so the built-with pages stay honest.