AI Practice Knowledge BaseWhat is Vibe Coding
From "writing code" to "vibe programming"-kicking off the AI-native development era
What is Vibe Coding
On February 3, 2025, Andrej Karpathy posted on X. He's a founding member of OpenAI, former Tesla AI director, and a Stanford PhD. He said he'd invented a new way to program called Vibe Coding.
He put it like this:
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.
In plain English: fully lean into intuition, ride the exponential curve, and forget the code even exists.
The phrase Vibe Coding blew up overnight.
How Karpathy does it
He uses Cursor Composer with Claude Sonnet. He often skips the keyboard entirely, dictating with SuperWhisper. He gives lazy prompts like "halve the sidebar padding" because he doesn't want to hunt through code.
He always clicks Accept All without checking what changed. When he hits errors, he pastes the stack trace and usually fixes it. The codebase keeps growing beyond what he can understand. If AI can't fix a bug, he'll route around it or ask AI to tweak things randomly until the issue disappears.
He admits the results can be rough, but for a weekend project it's fun.
Why this matters
Karpathy isn't an average developer; he's a top deep learning expert. If even he codes this way, AI programming has hit an inflection point.
Traditional programming meant learning syntax, writing code, then debugging. Developers were filling in blanks; correct syntax was required for the program to run.
Now it's different. You just need to express the requirement clearly. You write instructions, not syntax. You debug prompts, not code. Code is no longer the goal-it's the byproduct of describing your idea.
Who can Vibe Code
If you have ideas but can't code, Vibe Coding works. If you're a PM validating ideas quickly, it works. If you're a regular person building a side project, it works. If you're a developer seeking leverage, it works.
The only requirement: you must be able to articulate what you want.
How this book is positioned
Zero coding background. Use prompts to have AI build a product. Collect your first dollar.
We won't turn you into a traditional programmer. We'll turn you into a Vibe Coder-someone who uses AI to turn ideas into revenue.
What you need
Hardware is simple: any Mac or Windows laptop. You need stable internet to talk to AI tools.
Software will be covered in detail later. Key pieces include AI coding tools (Cursor, Windsurf), AI chat tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini), and a Chromium-based browser.
Mindset matters most: patience (AI needs iterations), curiosity (try new tools), and bias to action (build, don't just bookmark).
A real story
On September 30, 2025, OpenAI released Sora 2. I registered sorasy.com on October 3, launched on October 7, and got my first $79 payment on November 12.
From spotting the opportunity to getting paid took under two months. I'm not a career programmer, but I can describe requirements and collaborate with AI.
This book breaks that journey into repeatable steps.
Next chapter: what AI can and can't do. Set the boundaries first; then use it well.