In February 2025, Andrej Karpathy tweeted about a new way he was building software — describing what he wanted to an AI and barely reading the code it wrote. He called it “vibe coding.” One year later, it's changed how software gets built.
Vibe coding is the practice of building software by communicating intent in natural language and letting AI tools handle the implementation. Instead of writing code line by line, you describe what you want — “add a modal that shows user profile information when they click their avatar” — and an AI coding assistant writes the code.
The “vibe” part captures something important: you're building based on what feels right and what you want to create, rather than getting deep in the mechanics of how to build it. You set the direction. The AI handles the syntax.
Karpathy's original definition included a controversial element: he talked about “not even always reading the code” — just running it, seeing if it works, and moving on. This aspect generated significant debate in the engineering community, but it captured something real about how many developers were starting to use AI tools.
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The vibe coding movement is powered by a new generation of AI-native development tools:
We've worked with dozens of startups over the past year, and vibe coding has changed how teams build in several concrete ways:
The most dramatic change is that founders without deep coding backgrounds are now building functional prototypes using Bolt.new, v0, and Cursor. A non-technical founder can describe their product concept, get a working prototype in a day, and validate it with users before hiring a single engineer. This has dramatically accelerated the pre-seed validation process.
Senior engineers who embrace AI coding tools aren't being replaced — they're multiplying their output. At HyperNest Labs, our engineers use Cursor with Claude as their primary coding environment. Routine tasks (CRUD operations, boilerplate, tests, documentation) that used to take hours now take minutes. This frees senior engineering time for the high-value work that still requires human judgment: system architecture, performance optimization, and security.
Counterintuitively, the rise of vibe coding has increased the importance of code review. When AI is generating large chunks of code, you need senior engineers who can recognize subtle bugs, security vulnerabilities, and architectural problems that AI tools often miss. Teams are investing more in senior engineering review capacity, not less.
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We build with Cursor, Claude, and the full AI toolkit — without sacrificing code quality.
Vibe coding isn't magic, and teams that treat it as such create serious problems:
The skills that matter most for engineers have shifted. Typing speed and raw code volume matter less. What matters more:
At HyperNest Labs, we look for founding engineers who are excellent at directing AI tools while maintaining the judgment to know when not to trust AI output. The best engineers in 2026 are “AI-amplified” — not replaced.
Yes — with guardrails. Our recommendation:
The startups that are winning in 2026 aren't choosing between AI tools and human engineering judgment — they're combining both. Fast shipping from AI tools, quality and security from senior human judgment.
Vibe coding (coined by Andrej Karpathy in 2025) is the practice of building software by describing what you want in natural language and letting AI tools write the actual code. The developer focuses on intent and direction rather than syntax and implementation.
Andrej Karpathy (former Tesla AI director and OpenAI co-founder) coined the term in a February 2025 tweet describing his experience building software using AI tools where he barely read the generated code.
The leading tools are Cursor (AI-first code editor), GitHub Copilot, Claude Code (Anthropic's terminal agent), Bolt.new (full-stack app builder), v0 by Vercel (React/Next.js component generator), and Devin (autonomous AI engineer).