Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI write the code, largely accepting the output without reading every line. AI researcher Andrej Karpathy coined the term in February 2025, and Collins English Dictionary named it Word of the Year for 2025.
You steer with prompts, the model writes and rewrites, and you judge the result by whether it runs, not by the code underneath. That trade is powerful in some situations and expensive in others. Here is where the line sits.
How vibe coding works in practice
You describe the feature in plain English inside an AI coding tool: Cursor or Claude Code if you are comfortable in an editor, Lovable, Bolt, or Replit if you want a full app scaffolded from a chat box. The tool writes the code, you run it, and when something breaks you paste the error back and ask for a fix. Repeat until it works. A prototype that used to take a freelancer two weeks can appear in an afternoon. The catch: you now own software you may not fully understand. This shift in who writes the first draft is a big part of the future of web development.
Where it shines, and where it bites
It shines on prototypes, internal tools, and throwaway scripts: anything where speed matters more than polish and nobody depends on the code tomorrow. We use AI-assisted builds for exactly this kind of internal tooling at Gleam.
It bites in production. Research collected on the topic includes a 2025 CodeRabbit analysis that found AI co-authored code carried roughly 2.74x more security vulnerabilities than human-written code, and GitClear data showing code duplication rising sharply as AI adoption grew. For websites specifically, AI-generated builds often ship messy markup with no heading hierarchy, no meta control, and none of the technical SEO structure search engines need to rank a page.
Should you vibe code your business website?
Prototype with it, absolutely. Vibe code the demo, test the idea on real users, and spend nothing on design until the concept proves out. Some founders go one step lighter and use one of the best AI website builders instead, which at least handle hosting and responsive layouts for you.
But when the website has to win customers, treat vibe coding as the sketch, not the building. A production site needs clean structure, real security, maintainable code, and SEO that compounds. That is a website development job, and it is cheaper to do once than to untangle later.
Frequently asked questions
Who invented vibe coding?
Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI and former director of AI at Tesla, coined the term in a February 2025 post on X, describing a style of building where you "fully give in to the vibes" and forget the code exists. Merriam-Webster flagged it as trending slang within weeks, and Collins English Dictionary named it Word of the Year for 2025.
Is vibe coding real programming?
It produces real, running software, so in one sense yes. But many engineers draw a line: developer Simon Willison argues that if you carefully review every line before shipping, you are doing AI-assisted development, not vibe coding. The defining trait is accepting code you have not fully read, which is exactly why it suits experiments better than systems people depend on.
Can I build a website with vibe coding?
Yes, and for a demo or an internal tool it is often the fastest route. For a public business website the risks are structural: AI-generated sites frequently ship with tangled markup, weak security, and little of the technical SEO a page needs to rank. Prototype the idea this way by all means, then have the production build done properly.
Turn the Prototype Into a Product.
You vibe coded the demo. We build the production version: clean Webflow build, structured for SEO, maintainable without you touching code. Fixed quote in 24 hours.
