Welcome to the vibe coding revolution
Earlier this year, Michael Luo, a product manager at Stripe, decided to launch a side project in his free time. After seeing a tweet about the price of the contract software Docusign, he wondered if he could build a free alternative.
How hard could it be?
With newly available AI-powered coding tools, not that hard at all.
“In about a weekend, I built a UETA and ESIGN compliant tool. And it was free. And it cost me less than $50,” he wrote on X.
The free tool went viral and caught the attention of Docusign itself, which perceived it as a threat, sending a cease and desist letter to Luo. Undeterred, his tool Inkless has continued to grow as a free alternative.
With new AI-powered coding tools, it’s never been easier to build new technology. We have officially entered the era of vibe coding, where software can be built in just minutes by conversing with an AI chatbot.
In this newsletter, we explore the good and bad vibes of vibe coding—what it means for educators, technologists, and everyday users, and how it might reshape our relationship with technology.
// What is vibe coding?
Vibe coding is the practice of using natural language prompts to instruct an AI agent to write code. Instead of needing to learn traditional coding methods, vibe coding with a tool like Lovable, Cursor, or Replit can turn ideas into apps, websites, or software just by describing them. No need to learn JavaScript or Python; the AI handles the rest.
The term was coined in February by Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI and former AI leader at Tesla. In his words:
“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.”
And that’s the point: When AI handles the complexity, you can focus entirely on intent and imagination.
It may sound breezy, but the impact is serious and the dollars are big.
Shortly after the 2024 U.S. election last November, the Swedish startup Lovable officially launched its AI coding product to customers. Just eight months later, Lovable has become the fastest-growing tech company in history to reach $100 million in revenue.
Today, Lovable is booking $1 million a day. In June alone, users built 750,000 apps, websites, and even full businesses using its interface. Startups are prototyping new tools. Teachers are designing interactive games. Friends are spinning up weekend apps. The popular tech blogger Lenny Rachitsky recently shared 50 fun and clever things people have created. Last week, OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT 5.0 offered a number of improvements to make vibe coding even easier.
// The vibe coding revolution
Vibe coding has the potential to unlock new forms of creativity and democratize access to software development.
Democratizing technology
The barrier to creating apps, websites, and even entire businesses has been significantly reduced as conversational AI chatbots replace the need for deep technical expertise in coding languages. Kids as young as eight years old can now vibe code.
Increased speed
Vibe coding increases the speed of development and prototyping. What used to take days now takes hours. What used to take hours now takes minutes. The time between idea and workable prototype has shrunk, and the experience has improved.
- In educational settings, students can rapidly prototype ideas and receive immediate visual feedback, leading to a more engaging and motivational approach to learning.
- In professional settings, 84% of developers are using AI coding tools in their workflows, according to the 2025 Developer Survey.
Greater creativity
Instead of spending time mastering the precise rules, structures, and syntax of programming languages (such as debugging semicolon placement and memorizing function signatures), people can now focus on computational thinking—the ability to break down complex problems, recognize patterns, and design logical solutions using technology. Builders can outsource the burdensome cognitive load of coding to software, allowing them to stay focused on the bigger picture.
The data privacy risks
The rise of vibe coding could lead to substantial data privacy risks. We might be at the dawn of an explosion of software created by individuals that lacks proper security protocols and data privacy settings. As we observed with 23andMe (by no means a small or vibe-coded company), the bankruptcy of a company could expose users to losing control of their data or it being sold.
Building a robust data privacy infrastructure is more complicated than vibe coding a website. As the number of solopreneur vibe-coded tools grows exponentially, so too could the gaps and vulnerabilities around data privacy and security.
// The risks of cognitive offloading
Tools that democratize access and accelerate development can also encourage us to hand over too much of our thinking to machines.
In a July newsletter, we explored the implications of “cognitive offloading” when leaning on AI to do too much of our thinking for us. A similar disengagement occurs when AI tools handle the heavy lifting in the coding process.
Lisa Barceló, a staff data scientist at Gusto, a payroll software company, is one of the top users of Cursor on the data team.
“It’s a difficult balance to strike between what to offload and what to hold tightly,” she said. “There’s a temptation to outsource too much work to AI tools. But when we do, we abdicate our role as strategists and true data scientists.”
// The human role in building technology
With tools that help us to outsource the technical work to AI, how should the education of technologists like software engineers and data scientists change?
At the University of Washington, the curriculum is already evolving. Magdalena Balazinska, head of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, put it starkly:
“Coding is dead. AI can do that. We have never graduated coders. We have always graduated software engineers.”
She argues the real skill isn’t translating ideas into code; it’s deciding what to build and why. That creative, strategic work is more important than ever.
As Balazinska suggests, future engineers won’t stand out for knowing the tools. They’ll stand out for knowing how to use them well. Judgment, not syntax, is the competitive edge.
// The next frontier
Companies like Lovable want their tools to be considered as opinionated CTOs. But unlike their human counterparts, these tools struggle with discernment, judgment, and direction. They don't know what to build or where to focus.
We’ve made it easier than ever to build anything—but harder than ever to pause and ask what's worth building.
The challenge ahead isn’t technical, it’s human. We need to develop new forms of literacy: not just computational thinking, but strategic thinking about when and how to deploy technology. In a world where anyone can vibe code, the frontier remains unchanged: human discernment, intuition, and wisdom.
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