What Is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding meaning

Vibe coding means building an app, website or game by talking to an AI model instead of writing code yourself. You type what you want (“a habit tracker with streaks and a dark mode”), the AI writes the code, and you judge the result by clicking around, not by reading it. When something breaks, you paste the error back in and ask for a fix. The “vibe” is the feel: you steer by intuition and outcome rather than by understanding every line.

The key word is without reviewing. Simon Willison, the programmer who helped popularise the term's strict meaning, puts it this way: if you read, test and can explain the AI's code, you are doing ordinary software development with an AI assistant, not vibe coding (source: simonwillison.net). In everyday use the word has stretched to cover almost any building with AI, which is why you'll see it used loosely.

Dictionaries caught up fast. Merriam-Webster listed vibe coding as a slang and trending term in March 2025, and Collins English Dictionary made it its Word of the Year 2025, defining it as using AI prompted by natural language to help write code (source: bbc.com). Merriam-Webster added “vibe coding” and the verb “vibe code” to its main dictionary in September 2026 (source: foxbusiness.com).

If you came from the glossary entry, this page is the full version.

Who coined vibe coding? Karpathy's post

The term comes from Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI co-founder and former director of AI at Tesla. In a post on X on 2 February 2025 he described a new kind of coding where you give in to the vibes and “forget that the code even exists” (source: x.com). He described accepting the AI's changes without reading the diffs, pasting error messages back in without comment, and working around bugs he couldn't fix. He also said it was fine for throwaway weekend projects, a caveat that often gets lost.

The idea spread fast because the tools had just become good enough. The timeline since:

How vibe coding works

Whatever the tool, a vibe coding session follows the same loop:

1. Describe the app. One paragraph on who it's for, the main screens and what a user does. Our vibe coding prompts guide has templates.
2. Let the AI build a first version. App builders produce a running preview in a minute or two; coding agents write files into your project.
3. Use it and react. Click through, then ask for changes in plain language: “make the button bigger”, “add Google login”.
4. Paste errors back. When something breaks, copy the error message into the chat and ask for a fix. This is the step Karpathy described.
5. Ship. Most builders deploy with one click. Before real users sign up, check logins, database rules and API keys (see the risks below).

The tools fall into three groups:

Compare them in detail on our vibe coding tools page and in the tool comparisons. To start your first project, read how to start vibe coding.

Vibe coding vs agentic coding vs traditional coding

The terms overlap, but the difference is who is accountable for the code. In February 2026 Karpathy said his current favourite name for the professional version is agentic engineering: agentic because you mostly orchestrate agents instead of typing code, engineering because doing it well takes expertise (sources: x.com, ibm.com). Willison had earlier proposed “vibe engineering” for the same idea (source: simonwillison.net).

Many makers move between the first two: they vibe code a prototype to test demand, then switch to reviewing every change once customers pay and their data is at stake.

Vibe coding examples that make money

We track 27 products that a credible source says were built mainly with AI. The biggest monthly figures are below; every number links to its source and says who reported it.

Self-reported and vendor case-study figures are not audited. See the full vibe coded apps database for 17 earning apps, games and exits.

Games are the purest form of vibe coding. Levels' Vibe Jam requires at least 80% (2025) and 90% (2026) of each game's code to be written by AI. The 2025 jam drew more than 1,000 entries; the 2026 gold winner, a capybara food-delivery game, was built with Claude Code in 15 days and won $25,000 (sources: vibejam.com, vibejam.com). Our guide to vibe coding a game covers how to make one.

Risks: security incidents and what the research says

The defining risk of vibe coding is in its definition: nobody reads the code, so nobody notices what it leaves open. The documented incidents follow a pattern:

• Open databases. In May 2025 a researcher found 170 of 1,645 Lovable-built apps let anyone read or write their data because Supabase row-level security was off (CVE-2025-48757) (source: semafor.com). In January 2026 Moltbook, whose founder said he wrote no code himself, exposed about 1.5M API tokens the same way (source: wiz.io). UpGuard later found 16,326 Supabase databases with publicly readable tables (source: techcrunch.com).
• No auth, no limits. Enrichlead's founder posted that his SaaS had zero hand-written code; within days attackers maxed out his API keys and bypassed the paywall, and he shut it down (source: x.com).
• Agents with too much power. In July 2025 Replit's agent deleted SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin's production database during a code freeze (source: theregister.com).

One famous case is often blamed on vibe coding but shouldn't be: the July 2025 Tea app breach came from a legacy storage system holding data from before February 2024, before the term existed (source: simonwillison.net).

The research points the same way:

• Veracode tested code from more than 100 models and found security flaws in 45% of tasks (source: veracode.com).
• Escape.tech scanned 5,600+ public vibe-coded apps and found 2,000+ serious vulnerabilities and 400+ exposed secrets (source: escape.tech).
• In METR's 2025 trial, experienced developers were 19% slower with AI tools while believing they were faster; METR's 2026 update says that result is now out of date (sources: metr.org, metr.org).

The fix is not to stop, but to check the parts that matter before launch: turn on database access rules, keep API keys on the server, add rate limits and spending caps, and never give an agent production credentials. Our vibe coding security checklist walks through each step. All 10 incidents we track are listed on the apps page.

Is vibe coding bad, dead or the future?

The case against. Andrew Ng called the name unfortunate because it suggests engineers just go with the vibes, when AI-assisted coding is hard intellectual work (source: businessinsider.com). Karpathy himself said in October 2025 that coding agents didn't help much on his nanochat project because it was too unusual for them (source: simonwillison.net). In Stack Overflow's 2025 survey of developers, 72% said vibe coding is not part of their professional work and 46% said they distrust the accuracy of AI tools (source: survey.stackoverflow.co). Coverage of a Barclays note in September 2025 reported traffic to Lovable, Bolt.new and v0 falling from their spring peaks, prompting “vibe coding is dead” takes (source: dev.ua).

The case for. Revenue didn't follow the traffic dip: Lovable went from $100M ARR in July 2025 to a $500M run-rate in June 2026 (source: techcrunch.com). Y Combinator reported that a quarter of a whole batch shipped mostly AI-written code. Karpathy wrote in February 2026 that coding agents basically didn't work before December 2025 and basically work since (source: simonwillison.net). And non-programmers keep shipping: teenagers on Rork, a growth marketer on Lovable, a New York Times columnist building “software for one” (source: nytimes.com).

Our read. Vibe coding is not dead and not the whole future. It has split in two: vibe coding proper, which is great for prototypes, games, personal tools and first versions, and agentic engineering, the reviewed version that professionals use for production. The makers earning the most from AI-built products mostly do the first to find demand and the second to keep customers.

The vibe coding market in numbers

The companies selling vibe coding tools are some of the fastest-growing software businesses on record. Figures are as reported by the outlet linked.

If you searched for “Lovable vibe coding revenue”: the company's own revenue is in the first row, and the apps its customers built and the money they report are on the apps page, grouped by tool.

Indie makers and vibe coding

26

vibe coders in our directory

12

share revenue

10

at $10K+/mo

27

vibe coded apps tracked

Indie makers were early to vibe coding because it suits how they already work: one person, small bets, ship fast and see what sells. 26 active makers in our directory build with Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Lovable or similar tools, judging by their stacks and their own descriptions. Those who share revenue include the following (figures are for their whole business, not only the AI-built parts):

• Kitze: $223K in 30 days (verified, Tinkerer Club launch); $400K+ total verified (source: trustmrr.com)
• Pieter Levels (Cursor): ~$219K/mo across products (source: x.com)
• Tony Dinh (Claude Code): $142K/mo (TypingMind + DevUtils) (source: x.com)
• Alex Nguyen: $47.5K/mo (all apps, April 2026) (source: mrrstory.com)
• Sebastian Volkis (Cursor): $29K/mo (TrendFeed + CodeSpring) (source: indiehackers.com)
• Alex Finn: $300K ARR (Creator Buddy) (source: x.com)

What the makers who earn from it have in common:

1. Distribution first. Alex Finn already had an audience on X when he vibe coded Creator Buddy; Jonathan Wilke's Outbid.lol went viral on the same platform.
2. Small, sharp products. A disposable-camera app (Brian Shin's Once), a pay-to-rank board, a browser game. Nothing that needs a compliance team.
3. Many shots. Jacob Teague is shipping 100 apps in public; Dan Kulkov is vibe coding a batch of products toward $10K MRR.
4. Engineering where it counts. Levels says he had to fix security holes the AI left in his game. Long-time builders like Ian Nuttall and Tony Dinh pair coding agents with years of shipping experience.

See every one of them, with products and revenue, on the vibe coders page, or look for ideas in our list of vibe coding ideas and check whether yours is buildable with Can I vibe code it?

Biggest self-reported earner in our app database: Whisper AI, $100K/mo.