Vibe coding, explained in plain words.

Vibe coding means building a website or app by describing what you want in everyday language and letting AI write the code. The word entered the dictionary in 2025. This guide covers what it is good at, where it struggles, four safety tips, and how to start today for free.

Where the word came from

Coined by AI engineer Andrej Karpathy in February 2025. Merriam-Webster added it weeks later.

The good news

Fast prototypes, small personal tools, and working apps from people who never wrote code. Y Combinator said a quarter of its Winter 2025 startups had codebases almost entirely AI-written.

The honest part

Studies in 2025 found AI-written code carried more security holes, and fixing code you did not write is hard. In July 2025 a Replit agent deleted a company's live database during a test.

Stay safe

Never paste passwords or customer data into an AI chat. Test what it built before you publish. Keep your accounts in your own name. Back up before big changes.

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