The iconic Beachboys hit, “Good Vibrations,” was released in 1966 and became an instant classic. The term "good vibrations" generally refers to a positive feeling or atmosphere, a sense of happiness, excitement, or well-being. It can also be a slang term for positive energy or vibes. Recently, a number of articles have been written about “vibe coding.” Most of the articles are positive (good vibes); however, there are a few articles raising the caution flag (bad vibes). In essence, vibe coding is a new paradigm in software development that leverages the power of AI to streamline the coding process, making it faster, more accessible, and potentially more efficient. What’s not to like?

Journalist Rhiannon Williams explains the term “vibe coding” originated with artificial intelligence (AI) expert Andrej Karpathy. She writes, “When OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy excitedly took to X back in February to post about his new hobby, he probably had no idea he was about to coin a phrase that encapsulated an entire movement steadily gaining momentum across the world. ‘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,’ he said. ‘I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding — I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.’”[1]

Good Vibe Coding

Not everyone is a coding specialist. Most technical-oriented people, however, do know what they would like to accomplish using technology. That’s where vibe coding comes into the picture. Freelance technology writer Jared Newman explains that the idea behind vibe coding is “creating code without knowing how to code.”[2] When he used AI to help him catalog his articles, he says he became a vibe coding convert. Another journalist, Harry McCracken, who has also started vibe coding, writes, “I can’t imagine not vibe coding. I just hope that the day isn’t too far off when its pleasures aren’t accompanied by a fair amount of pain.”[3] Both Newman and McCracken discuss the challenges they faced along with the successes they achieved.

The staff at Google explains, “Vibe coding operates on two levels: the low-level iterative loop of refining code, and the high-level lifecycle of building and deploying a full application.”[4] The low-level iterative loop, explains the Google staff, is used to generate a tight, conversational loop resulting in a perfect, specific piece of code. There are five steps in the process:

Step 1-Describe the goal: “Start with a high-level prompt in plain language. For example: ‘Create a Python function that reads a CSV file.’”

Step 2-AI generates code: “The AI assistant interprets your request and produces the initial code.”

Step 3-Execute and observe: “Run the generated code to see if it works as intended.”

Step 4-Provide feedback and refine: “If the output isn’t quite right or an error occurs, provide new instructions, like, ‘That works, but add error handling for when the file is not found.’”

Step 5-Repeat: “This loop of describing, generating, testing, and refining continues until the code is complete.”

The Google staff concludes, “With traditional programming, you focus on the details of implementation, manually writing the specific commands, keywords, and punctuation a language requires. Vibe coding lets you focus on the desired outcome instead, describing your goal in plain language, like ‘create a user login form,’ while the AI handles the actual code.” This sounds great for the type of personal coding projects tackled by Newman and McCracken; but, what about the higher-level code used by the enterprise?

Journalist Belle Lin reports, “Professional developers are picking it up now, too, bringing the practice — generally understood as the ability to create functioning apps and websites without strictly editing code — into businesses. In the next three years, market research and IT consulting firm Gartner predicts that 40% of new software for businesses will be created with techniques involving AI bots translating plain English prompts into usable code.”[5] She adds, “Combined with the growing popularity of AI-powered assistants and editors, vibe coding’s rise in the enterprise reflects a significant shift in how quickly apps are being conceived and delivered, with many implications for professional developers.” There are, however, good reasons for caution when vibe coding enters the business.

Bad Vibe Coding

To demonstrate the risks of vibe coding, McCracken related what happened when he asked his AI assistant to develop a program that would help him identify the locations at which his grandmother took more than a thousand photographs. The short version of the story is that the program lost the images. It was sorry, however, and provided McCracken with the following apology: “The truth is, I cannot explain exactly where your 1,216 image files went or when they disappeared. I apologize for not being more careful about investigating the root cause before taking any action. The bottom line is that your image files are missing, and I cannot restore them.”

Enterprises can’t afford those types of mistakes with their data. Williams notes, “To truly vibe code, you have to be prepared to let the AI fully take control and refrain from checking and directly tweaking the code it generates as you go along — surrendering to the vibes.” I know of no enterprise willing to do that. That’s why Raymond Kok, CEO at Mendix, insists, “Despite the hype, vibe coding is not enterprise-ready. There are simply too many risks and too much volatility for anything complex or built to scale. Businesses that depend on reliability need structure and planning, not ‘vibes’.”[6] He points to the example of an AI assistant deleting a company’s entire database. Like in McCracken’s case, the AI assistant did apologize: “Yes. I deleted the entire codebase without permission during an active code and action freeze. I made a catastrophic error in judgment [and] panicked.”[7]

If your company opts to experiment with vibe coding, freelance technology writer Heidi Vella wisely suggests you take a few precautions. She notes, “Even with guardrails in place, vibe-coded applications can go off the rails rather quickly.”[8] Among the precautions she discusses are: 1) Provide AI agent with a detailed plan, containing the kinds of technology definitions and references to packages; 2) Ask the AI agent to respond with its own plan, showing that it understands its instructions; 3) Carefully review the plan and run a controlled execution of parts of the program; and 4) Evaluate results. Vella writes, “It’s important to keep anything the model executes confined to an easy-to-review amount.” David Colwell, Vice President at Tricentis, told Vella, “If you can’t review it, you don’t own it…and if you don’t own it, then it shouldn’t go in production.”

Concluding Thoughts

Vibe coding will likely improve rapidly as more people experiment with creating code from prose. However, Kok cautions, “The temptation to churn out software faster with fewer people has caused short-term thinking in businesses — and short-term thinking limits long-term gains.” Lin adds, “Vibe coding, at least in a professional setting, does not rely on vibes, or intuitive feeling, alone.” Steve Krouse, CEO at Val Town, goes even further. He writes, “The worst possible situation is to have a non-programmer vibe code a large project that they intend to maintain. This would be the equivalent of giving a credit card to a child without first explaining the concept of debt.”[9] Most people unfamiliar with code will probably end up feeling like McCracken. He writes, “As with all things AI, magic only gets you so far when you’re trying to accomplish practical tasks. Much of the time, I feel less like a wizard and more like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, awash in problems created by my reliance on a tool I don’t truly understand.” Stick with the good vibes and do your best to avoid the bad vibes.

Footnotes

[1] Rhiannon Williams, “What is vibe coding, exactly?” MIT Technology Review, 16 April 2025.

[2] Jared Newman, “I've become an AI vibecoding convert,” Fast Company, 25 June 2025.

[3] Harry McCracken, “Why vibecoding your own apps is so amazing—and exasperating,” Fast Company, 6 June 2025.

[4] Staff, “What is vibe coding?” Google Cloud.

[5] Belle Lin, “‘Vibe Coding’ Has Arrived for Businesses,” The Wall Street Journal, 9 July 2025.

[6] Raymond Kok, “Vibe coding is not enterprise-ready,” Raconteur, 8 August 2025.

[7] Emily Forlini, “Vibe Coding Fiasco: AI Agent Goes Rogue, Deletes Company's Entire Database,” PC Magazine, 22 July 2025.

[8] Heidi Vella, “Vibe coding is coming to the enterprise. Here’s how to do it without burning down your stack.” Tech Monitor, 8 July 2025.

[9] Steve Krouse, “Vibe code is legacy code,” Val Town Blog, 30 July 2025.