It all started with a tweet.
Someone casually dropped the phrase “vibe coding” in a thread about AI tools and no-code platforms, and I thought, wait, what? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing lately... but I didn’t know it had a name.
So here we are. Talking about this weird, exciting, and slightly terrifying new way of building things (vibe coding) and why it might just be the future of software development (or at least a big part of it).
First off… what even is “vibe coding”?
Vibe coding isn’t about syntax. It’s not about algorithms. It’s not even really about “coding” in the traditional sense.
It’s about describing what you want to build in plain English, and letting AI figure out the rest. You don’t give step-by-step instructions. You give a vibe.
“I want a to-do app with a cute frog mascot and a growth animation when tasks are checked off. Also make it feel calm, like a breathing app.”
That’s vibe coding.
It’s like giving a mood board to a developer and saying: "Here’s the feeling I want. Can you make it real?"
Only now....the developer is an AI model.
When did this start?
Let’s rewind a bit.
Before “vibe coding” was even a thing, devs already had Copilot for a while. It was cool, like autocomplete on steroids. But it still felt very developer-y. You had to know what you were doing. You were still in the code.
Then bolt.new came along… and changed literally everything.
This thing went viral. Everyone was talking about it. A simple input box where you could type a prompt like:
“Make a website for my AI assistant that looks like Apple’s 2007 homepage but more playful.”
… and bam, in seconds, you had a working app. Not a design mockup. Not a bunch of lorem ipsum divs. An actual deployed project.
The craziest part? Bolt wasn’t just hype. They reportedly hit over $40 million in ARR in their first 5 months, with tens of thousands of users flooding in. Their CEO was this young visionary who openly said that “most people shouldn’t need to code” and built the tool to prove it.
Oh, and by the way? Their core team included a senior engineer from Anthropic, and the magic behind the scenes? It wasn’t OpenAI. It was Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Anthropic’s breakthrough model that absolutely crushed it when it came to generating clean, structured, production-grade code.
That’s when it hit a new level.
After Bolt’s breakout, other tools started popping up to ride the wave.
First came Cursor, a VS Code fork that turns your Integrated Development Environment (IDE) into an AI-powered and agentic coder. Unlike Copilot, Cursor isn't just about helping you finish a line, it helps you understand, refactor, and vibe with your code. It also understood the codebase, you can mention documentations, you can literally chat with your repo and make the AI do its thing. There is so much you can do and they keep adding feature by the day, that it would be impossible to list them all here.
And then came Windsurf, the newer kid on the block, laser-focused on making AI feel like a true pair programmer. It took things even further with context-aware suggestions and multi-file understanding that actually worked. No more “what file are you talking about?” moments.
That’s when “vibe coding” stopped being a meme and started becoming a workflow.
You weren’t just typing code anymore. You were describing ideas.
And the AI? It was listening.
Since then so many new IDEs followed that you I wouldn't blame you if your lost track of them! And Windsurf, one of the tools I mentioned, recently went through a chaotic period and rumours were that it could have been bought by OpenAI or Google and in the end it went to Cognition, the maker of Devin, a super expensive AI tool that promises to replace junior developers.
My first taste of vibe coding
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I started vibe coding when I was trying to design the MVP for one of my side projects, the Freaking Nomads community hub.
I opened a new project in bolt.new, pasted a prompt like:
“Landing page for a community hub for digital nomads. This is a screenshot of my existing site, make the UI similar. Include Lucid icons, big CTAs, soft animations.”
Boom. The AI gave me something 80% there. I spent the next hour tweaking colors and layout, not writing a single line of code.
It was wild.
Even when I needed logic, like an upvote or user input handling, I found myself describing it to bolt.new like I was talking to a junior dev:
“Can you add a logic so that when a user upvotes a place, it gets a nice animation and it increases the upvote?”
And bolt.new would generate working React code in NextJS with the right component structure. Did I know exactly how it worked under the hood? Not always. But it worked. That was enough.
Sooner or later I realised bolt.new had its own limitations and that I would stay stuck at 90%, so I switched immediately to Cursor which his still my go-to IDE today.
Why vibe coding is kind of a big deal
Let’s be real: most of us don’t care about code. We care about what code lets us build.
If you can skip the syntax and go straight to shipping something that feels polished and functional, why wouldn’t you?
Here’s why vibe coding might change everything:
- Faster prototyping: No more hours spent googling "how to center div".
- More people can build: Designers, writers, product folks, anyone who can describe what they want can start building.
- Creativity explodes: You're not limited by what you know how to code. You can chase ideas freely.
- Less gatekeeping: You don’t need a CS degree. You don’t even need JavaScript anymore.
- You save money on development (a lot): Just before vibe coding I had wasted 10k in a project built by an agency that it never saw the light of the day (ouch!)
Of course, there’s a dark side too. More on that in a sec.
Does this mean developers are doomed?
Short answer: no. Long answer: sort of… but not in the way you think.
Traditional “dev” work, the kind that’s mostly wiring together CRUD apps, is getting automated. Fast. The AI is coming for your form validations and API connectors.
But that doesn’t mean developers are irrelevant.
It means the job is changing.
Here’s what won’t be replaced:
- Systems thinking: Knowing how things connect and scale
- Debugging weird edge cases: AI still chokes on nuance
- Architecture decisions: Choosing the right tools for the job
- Developer empathy: Writing code that other humans can read
Basically, vibe coding kills the boilerplate. What’s left is the real thinking work.
And honestly? That’s kind of a dream.
Who’s already doing this?
Lots of indie makers and startups are quietly vibe coding. Most wouldn’t call it that, but they are.
- The person using Cursor to scaffold a Next.js app from a one-line idea
- The founder describing UI flow to an AI design tool
- The marketer tweaking their site’s CSS on bolt.new by saying “make the buttons pop more”
Even some devs are starting to “pair program” with AI by throwing vague vibes at it and refining the output.
It’s messy. It’s unpredictable. But it’s also kind of magical.
The risks of building on vibes
Okay, before we all vibe into the sunset, let’s talk about the pitfalls.
- You don’t really know what’s happening. This can be fine… until something breaks and you have no idea why.
- Security issues. AI-generated code isn’t always safe. Sometimes it hardcodes keys or opens vulnerabilities you won’t notice.
- Debugging? Good luck. When your whole app is stitched together by a language model, tracing bugs becomes… fun.
- Performance issues. Want to vibe up a beautiful animation-heavy landing page? Enjoy your 5MB bundle size.
So yeah, vibe coding is not the holy grail. Yet. And you kinda need to know still how a good software is made to get something decent, find your own tech stack and grasp at least what the architecture of your product will be. You can't just hoping for the best.
But for MVPs? For experiments? For creative projects?
It’s unbeatable.
It's a new way to build
Here’s the thing: I’m not saying traditional devs should pack up their keyboards and start writing poetry.
But I am saying the way we build is changing fast.
Just like Figma changed design, and Notion changed docs, vibe coding is changing how we bring software to life. It’s less about logic and more about intention. Less terminal, more conversation.
And I love it.
If you’re an indie hacker, a creative, or just someone with an idea, try vibe coding. Even if you’re a hardcore developer, play with it. See what happens when you stop writing specs and start describing feelings.
The future might not be written in code.
It might be written in vibes.
