What Is Vibe Coding? A Guide With Examples
Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want to an AI in plain language and accepting the code it generates, steering by results rather than reading every line. You say "make a dashboard of this month's orders with a filter by country", run what comes back, and keep prompting until it looks right. It has made software creation accessible to people who never learned to code, and much faster for people who did.
Where the term came from
AI researcher Andrej Karpathy coined "vibe coding" in early 2025 to describe fully giving in to the AI: prompting, accepting changes without close review and pasting errors back until the program works. The term spread quickly as tools like Cursor, Lovable, Bolt and Replit made the workflow mainstream.
How vibe coding works
- Describe the app or change in natural language.
- Generate: the AI writes or edits the code.
- Run it and look at the result.
- React: paste errors back or describe what to change.
- Repeat until it works.
Vibe coding examples
- A landing page for a new product, from one prompt to a deployed site.
- A personal tool, like a budget tracker or a habit app.
- A prototype to test an idea with users before engineering invests in it.
- A script to clean a CSV, rename files or call an API.
- An internal dashboard on a database, which is where the risks start to matter.
Popular vibe coding tools
| Tool type | Examples | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| AI app builders | Lovable, Bolt, Replit, v0 | Full apps from a prompt, hosted for you |
| AI code editors | Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot | Developers vibe coding inside a real codebase |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex | Multi-step changes across a repository |
| AI internal tool builders | Jet Admin | Business apps on company data with permissions built in |
For a full comparison, see our list of vibe coding platforms.
Benefits
- Ideas become working software in minutes.
- Non-developers can build tools for themselves.
- Developers skip boilerplate and focus on hard problems.
- Prototypes are cheap enough to throw away.
Risks for business apps
- Security: generated code can include exposed keys, missing authorization checks or injection flaws.
- Permissions: row-level access rules are easy to describe and easy to get wrong.
- Data handling: apps may copy sensitive data into places it should not be.
- Maintainability: nobody fully understands code nobody wrote by hand.
- Ownership: vibe-coded tools become shadow IT when the builder moves on.
Taking vibe coding to production
For anything that touches company data or many users, pair the speed of vibe coding with a foundation that handles the risky parts: authentication, permissions, data connections, hosting and audit logs. Either your engineers review and harden the generated code, or you generate the app on a platform where those parts are already built. We cover this in detail in vibe coding to production and no-code vs vibe coding.
How Jet Admin fits
Jet Admin brings vibe coding to internal tools without the security gaps. Describe the app and AI builds it on your data, across 200+ integrations queried in place, with authentication, permissions and hosting handled by the platform. Refine visually or in code with custom React, Vue or Angular components, 2-way GitHub sync and a CLI for Claude Code and Cursor. Unlimited users on every plan; granular permissions, SSO and audit logs on Business and above.
Frequently asked questions
What does vibe coding mean?
Building software by describing it to an AI and accepting the generated code, guided by whether the result works rather than by reviewing each line.
Who coined the term vibe coding?
Andrej Karpathy, in early 2025.
Is vibe coding good for beginners?
It is a fast way to build personal tools and prototypes. For apps handling sensitive data, beginners should use platforms with security built in.
Can vibe-coded apps be used in production?
Yes, with review and hardening, or when generated on a platform that already provides authentication, permissions and hosting.
Vibe code your next internal tool
Start with Jet Admin for free and generate an app on your own data with security built in.