Welcome: What Is Vibe Coding?

In February 2025, Andrej Karpathy — one of the founding members of OpenAI and former head of AI at Tesla — posted something that changed how people think about software:

“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.”

Within months, “vibe coding” became Collins Dictionary’s Word of the Year. Not because it was a novelty — but because millions of people started doing it. Designers building working apps. Entrepreneurs shipping MVPs in a weekend. Students creating projects that would have taken months.

What You’ll Learn

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Build functional web applications by describing them in plain English
• Choose the right AI tool for your project
• Write prompts that produce working code reliably
• Debug and fix problems when things break
• Deploy a complete app to the internet

What Vibe Coding Actually Is

Traditional coding: you learn a programming language, write syntax, debug errors, manage files, configure servers.

Vibe coding: you describe what you want in plain English, and AI writes all the code. You run it, see the result, and say “change the button to blue” or “add a login page.”

Example conversation:

You: “Build a personal budget tracker. It should have a form to add expenses with amount, category, and date. Show a pie chart of spending by category. Store data in the browser.”

AI: generates a complete, working budget tracker app

You: “Make the pie chart bigger and add a bar chart showing spending over time.”

AI: updates the app with both charts

That’s it. No React documentation. No CSS troubleshooting. No database setup. You describe, the AI builds.

✅ Quick Check: What’s the key difference between vibe coding and traditional coding? (Answer: In traditional coding, you write syntax in a programming language. In vibe coding, you describe what you want in natural language and AI writes the code. The output is the same — working software — but the input changes from code to conversation.)

What Vibe Coding Is Good For

The 70/20/10 rule: AI gets you ~70% of the way reliably, 20% requires some back-and-forth debugging, and 10% might need manual coding knowledge or a different approach.

The Tool Landscape

Two categories of vibe coding tools exist:

AI App Builders (No Code Required)

These build complete apps from a single description:

• Lovable — Best for full-stack apps from conversation
• Bolt.new — Quick prototypes in the browser
• Replit Agent — Full apps with hosting included
• v0 (Vercel) — UI components and front-end apps

AI Code Editors (Some Code Knowledge Helps)

These assist you while working in a code editor:

• Cursor — VS Code-based with AI built in
• Claude Code — Terminal-based, for power users
• GitHub Copilot — Inline code suggestions
• Windsurf — Deep context understanding for large projects

Don’t worry about choosing yet — the next lesson covers each tool in detail.

How This Course Works

• Format: Text lessons with examples, 10-15 minutes each
• Exercises: Build something in every lesson using free tools
• No prerequisites: We start from zero. Coding knowledge helps but isn’t required.
• Approach: Learn by building. Every concept is practiced immediately.

What to Expect

Lessons 1-2 give you context and tools. Lessons 3-5 teach the core skills (prompting, building, debugging). Lessons 6-7 cover production and advanced patterns. Lesson 8 is a full capstone project.

By the end, you’ll have a deployed app you built entirely through conversation with AI.

Key Takeaways

• Vibe coding means building software by describing it in natural language — AI writes the code
• Coined by Andrej Karpathy in 2025, it became Collins Dictionary’s Word of the Year
• Great for prototypes, MVPs, internal tools, and personal projects
• Two tool categories: AI app builders (no code) and AI code editors (some code)
• AI gets you ~70% of the way reliably — this course teaches the techniques for the remaining 30%

Up Next

In the next lesson, you’ll set up your vibe coding environment — choosing the right tool for your goals and building your first “hello world” app.