An economics paper by Miklós Koren, Gábor Békés, Julian Hinz and Aaron Lohmann, submitted to arXiv on 21 January 2026 under General Economics (econ.GN). It asks what Vibe Coding does to the open-source software (OSS) ecosystem as a whole, rather than to the individual developer who uses it.
The paper’s starting observation is that in vibe coding an AI agent builds software by selecting and assembling open-source components, often without the user reading documentation, reporting bugs or otherwise engaging with the maintainers of those components. To study the consequences, the authors develop an equilibrium model with endogenous entry and heterogeneous project quality, in which OSS is a scalable input into producing more software and users choose whether to use OSS directly or through vibe coding.
The model’s central tension is that vibe coding raises productivity by lowering the cost of using and building on existing code, while at the same time weakening the user engagement through which many maintainers earn their returns.
Key Points
- In the authors’ model, vibe coding raises productivity by making existing open-source code cheaper to use and build on.
- The same shift weakens the direct user engagement — reading documentation, reporting bugs, interacting with maintainers — through which many maintainers earn returns.
- When OSS is monetized only through direct user engagement, the model finds that greater adoption of vibe coding lowers entry and sharing, reduces the availability and quality of OSS, and reduces welfare despite the higher productivity. This result is derived from the paper’s theoretical model rather than measured.
- The authors conclude that sustaining OSS at its current scale under widespread vibe coding requires major changes in how maintainers are paid.