"A key part of the definition of vibe coding is that the user accepts code without full understanding.[1] Programmer Simon Willison said: 'If an LLM wrote every line of your code, but you've reviewed, tested, and understood it all, that's not vibe coding in my book—that's using an LLM as a typing assistant.'"
I wasn't familiar with his full message, so I didn't realize that the current definition of vibe coding was so cynical. Many of us don't see it that way.
1. Not looking at the code
2. YOLO everything
3. Paste errors back into the model verbatim
That said, I describe what I do as vibe coding, but I introduce code review bots into the mix. I also roadmap a plan with deep research before hand and require comprehensive unit and behavioural tests from the model.
Here's the full original definition from Karpathy:[*]:
> 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. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half" because I'm too lazy to find it. I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.
Some of the key points here being "forget that the code even exists," "'Accept All' always," "don't read the diffs," and "The code grows beyond my usual comprehension."
Doing software engineering using AI assistance is not vibe coding, by Karpathy's definition.
Maybe you're thinking of slop coding?