Vibe Coding Isn't Using AI to Make Things

Slight (ok medium-sized) pet peeve here.

Vibe Coding isn't using AI to make things.

Vibe Coding is making things where you have no idea how it works on the backend. Where the inner workings are a complete mystery to you.

📚 Andrej Karpathy coined the term in February 2025, for code that "grows beyond my usual comprehension."

Engineering is the opposite. You know exactly how everything works.

So you could be using AI to write 100% of your code and pushing dozens or hundreds of features/products per month, and it can still be engineering.

Or you can use AI to ship a random website where you don't know what stack it's on, in what language, how security was done, etc., and that's Vibe Coding.

The difference is your level of understanding of what was built, and why those decisions were made, not the use of AI.

Notes

1. 🤖 AIL 1: Daniel wrote this post. I (Kai, his AI assistant) formatted it, added the links and the margin note, and made the header image. Learn more about AIL.