Vibe Coding: Turn Your App Idea Into Reality — Just by Talking

Ever had an idea so brilliant you couldn’t wait to tell someone? You know that feeling—you turn to a friend and start explaining your idea, talking faster and faster as the details unfold in your mind. Except this time, instead of your friend just nodding along, an AI is listening. As you talk, the AI builds exactly what you are describing in front of your eyes. You want to add a new feature or tweak how it looks, and the AI adapts instantly.

This is vibe coding, an emerging concept coined by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy in February 2025 (source). Instead of writing code line by line, you describe your vision, and AI translates it into working software right before your eyes.

The magic of Vibe Coding: Thinking out loud, building in real time

Traditional coding requires structured problem-solving, technical syntax, and hours of debugging. Vibe coding flips the script. It’s like having a creative brainstorming session, except your AI collaborator actually builds what you are imagining.

Instead of worrying about syntax or low-level details, you focus on the big picture. AI fills in the gaps, suggesting features, frameworks, and designs. You iterate instantly, seeing prototypes take shape as you refine your ideas. This makes vibe coding a powerful tool for rapid ideation. It’s not just coding—it’s co-creating with AI.

Reality Check: The limits of today’s Vibe Coding

I have found Vibe coding a great way of converting my piles of ideas/ side projects into usable experiences. Using Replit, I have managed to get a trading card concept I have been putting off creating, up and running in an evening. 

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This is exciting! But hold your horses, we’re not quite at full Tony Stark-Jarvis levels yet. AI can assist, but I have found Vibe coding to have its limitations:

Performance and bugs

Imagine asking a robot to build a complex machine. Sometimes it works smoothly, and sometimes it's full of glitches and hidden weaknesses that cause it to break down unexpectedly. AI-generated code can have similar issues, leading to slow performance or sudden crashes.

The need for clear instructions

 AI is like a very literal assistant. You need to be extremely clear in explaining exactly what you want. Having some technical understanding helps, as you can use specific phrases that guide the AI to deliver the desired results.

Deploying your AI-created app

While some general AI tools, such as Claude, can help you create code, they won’t handle the entire process of building a finished product. More product-focused AI tools, such as Replit, will enable you to launch an application online, but getting a fully downloadable app on app stores will require technical expertise.

Don't forget planning and user experience

While vibe coding is exciting, its biggest strength is also its biggest risk—it allows you to dive in too quickly, skipping critical planning steps like user experience mapping, feature prioritisation, and performance optimisation.

Without a well-thought-out user journey, the result can feel chaotic or unintuitive. When you are constantly adding and tweaking, it is easy to end up with bloated functionality that drags performance down. AI-generated code might not be optimised, and making constant adjustments can lead to inefficient or obsolete code that clutters the project.

Even experienced teams fall into this trap. When the excitement of building takes over, planning and user experience can take a backseat. Features get added without a clear roadmap, and before long, the product feels cluttered and unfocused.

Where Vibe Coding shines right now

Despite these hurdles, vibe coding is already useful for certain tasks:

• Rapid Prototyping – Need to test an idea? AI can generate a rough MVP in minutes.
• Brainstorming & Ideation – AI helps refine ideas, offering suggestions you might not have considered.
• Proof-of-Concept Development – Quickly build something tangible to show clients or investors.

For startups, indie developers, and entrepreneurs, vibe coding saves time and lowers the barrier to experimentation.

The Future: Where Vibe Coding is headed

Today, vibe coding is in its early stages, but imagine where it could go. Fully interactive AI coding assistants could deeply understand project goals. Seamless integration with no-code and low-code platforms could make it possible to develop complete products without needing extensive programming expertise. AI-powered debugging, optimisation, and automatic feature recommendations could make development more efficient and accessible.

In the future, coding might feel less like writing instructions and more like having a conversation—a true creative collaboration between humans and AI.

Final Thoughts: The dawn of conversational coding

Vibe coding is not about replacing developers—it is about removing friction from idea to execution. But jumping in too fast without a clear roadmap can lead to a bloated, inefficient product. Even the best development teams need to remember that technology should serve people, not the other way around.

If you have ever had an idea so exciting you could barely get the words out fast enough, imagine if, instead of just explaining it, you could watch it take shape as you speak. That is the future we are heading toward.

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TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)

TL;DR: Vibe coding uses human language to create rapid prototypes and AI-powered products. The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy in February 2025 (source). It speeds up idea validation but requires planning to avoid technical debt and UX issues. AI is a tool; human oversight is crucial.

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