In this May 1, 2025 post, Simon Willison restates his definition of Vibe Coding: it does not mean “using AI tools to help write code” but “generating code with AI without caring about the code that is produced”. He points back to his earlier post Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding (but vibe coding rocks) and calls the distinction “a hill I am willing to die on”.
The occasion is two forthcoming books that he says use the term for exactly what it is not: Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond by Gene Kim and Steve Yegge (IT Revolution), and Addy Osmani’s O’Reilly book, then titled “Vibe Coding: The Future of Programming”, which likewise addresses how professional engineers can integrate AI-assisted coding tools into their workflow. An update added on September 4, 2025 notes that Osmani’s book is now titled Beyond Vibe Coding, which Willison calls a much better title.
Key Points
- Willison argues the term was coined by Andrej Karpathy only 84 days before the post, and quotes Karpathy’s tweet in full, emphasizing the phrases “forget that the code even exists” and “It’s not too bad for throwaway weekend projects”.
- He reads the tweet as defining vibe coding as a fun way to build throwaway projects while forgetting the code exists — not the same thing as using LLM tools as part of a process for responsibly building production code.
- He wonders whether this is a record for the time between a term being coined and the first published books that use it incorrectly, and notes that the books’ cover art had already been designed.
- His main disappointment is that a book on actual vibe coding is still needed: one helping people who are not software developers, and do not want to become developers, use vibe coding safely, effectively and responsibly to solve their own problems. He argues vibe coding is for them, not for people who are already software engineers.
- He lists open questions such a book could answer: what kinds of projects can be built this way, how to avoid traps around security, privacy, reliability and over-spending, and how to navigate the “jagged frontier” between what can and cannot be achieved.
- He concedes he has probably lost the argument, calling Semantic Diffusion “an unstoppable force”.
Context
The post is an opinion piece in Willison’s continuing effort to keep “vibe coding” tied to its narrow original meaning. Its claims about the two books rest on their announced titles, subtitles and descriptions at the time of writing, not on their published contents.