Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding (but vibe coding rocks) - Simon Willison

In a recent post, I commented on how Simon Willison wouldn't have agreed with the definition of vibe coding shared by the author. So I thought I link to his post as well.

I’m concerned that the definition is already escaping its original intent. I’m seeing people apply the term “vibe coding” to all forms of code written with the assistance of AI. I think that both dilutes the term and gives a false impression of what’s possible with responsible AI-assisted programming.

Here's a snippet of the original intent by Andrej Karpathy.

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. It’s possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard.

Vibe coding was never meant as a means to push critical code to production. Simon Willison talks about uses in low-stakes projects, and to consider the security of the code produced by LLMs.