New term: vibe coding

2025-02-02 · Publisher : Andrej Karpathy · Domain : Artificial Intelligence

Vibe coding means building software by describing what you want to an AI in natural language and accepting the generated code without really reading it, judging only the result.

### Definition **Vibe coding** is a way of programming in which you talk to an AI assistant, often by voice, accept its changes without reading them, paste error messages back as they are, and judge the program by its behavior rather than its code. ### Origin Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI co-founder, posted on X on February 2, 2025: "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 mentioned Cursor Composer with Claude Sonnet and the SuperWhisper dictation tool. ### What the term covers - Prototypes, personal tools or small games built by people who cannot program. - Platforms that generate a complete application from a description. - In March 2025, Merriam-Webster flagged it as trending slang; on November 6, 2025, Collins named it its 2025 Word of the Year. ### Criticism and limits Simon Willison points out that "vibe coding your way to a production codebase is clearly risky": code nobody understands is hard to maintain and secure. The term is also misused for any AI-assisted development, even when reviewed and tested. ### Key takeaway Vibe coding suits exploration and throwaway prototypes; once code has to last, review and testing are back in charge.

Tags : Vocabulaire, Code, Agents, Qualité