AI-assisted dev is not vibe coding

AI-assisted coding is amazing. It's fast. It's powerful. It's also currently called "vibe coding". This term will lead to trouble.

I've been a serious software developer for many years - and after having now built several substantial, release-grade software projects using full-blown AI assistance, I'm quite convinced that I was not "vibe coding" - I'm also convinced that's true for anyone building secure, robust, user-aligned software with AI assistance.

To see this, I find it helpful to break down the term "vibe coding". Clearly, the AI agent is doing the vast majority of "coding": Claude code, Cursor, or copilot is creating files, throwing down code, and writing test cases. This leaves our contributions elsewhere. What am we doing with the AI coder? Are we "vibing"?

The verb "vibe" is defined as "giving out a feeling" or "spending time in a relaxed way". We all have had moments where we're vibing. Maybe a delightful, free-flowing conversation, a leisurely jam session with friends, having a picnic in the park. That's vibing.

When was the last time you constructed something while in this state of mind? The closest I come on this is playfully building LEGOs with my kids while chatting about their day. I also remember vibing at the beach with family piling sand up to make a sand castle. Vibing is about play, about connection, and good feelings. Crucially, the emphasis is not placed on the excellence of what is being built.

Which really gets to the heart of why intentional development with AI assistance simply doesn't fit with "vibe coding". When we do that, we show up to that activity with the intention, focus, mental energy, and skills to build something with durability and quality.

This is what makes equating AI-assisted development with "vibe coding" downright dangerous. It suggests that it's acceptable... even desirable to engineer something without contemplating detailed design and engaging critical thought - being concerned with how specific choices could lead to or avoid bad outcomes like data leaks, awkward user experience, or expensive waste of compute resources.

Online tech communities are already buzzing with horror stories of how vibe coded software was launched with major security vulnerabilities and functional gaps. So this isn't news to many, but the momentum behind the term "vibe coding" seems hard to counter.

Ultimately, when we need to build something real, "vibe coding" puts us in the wrong state of mind.

I'm not saying that vibe coding isn't a thing or that we shouldn't do it. Personally, I've come to delight in playing with a software idea, aided by AI. This time broadens my imagination and allows me to feel my ideas in a way that wasn't possible before. If we'd like, we can call that a part of the building process - in the same sense we consider ideation a part of design.

But when someone is building something that needs to work, that needs to scale, that people will depend on - we should not think of them as vibing, we should not describe their work as vibing, they simply are not "vibing." That person is engaging in the serious and consequential act of building.