[Pearse]

I think this is my main confusion around vibe coding.

Is it a skill for the layman?

Or does it only work if you have the understanding you would need to manage a team of junior devs to build a project.

I feel like we need a different term for those two things.

[embedding-shape]

"Vibe coding" isn't a "skill", is a meme or a experiment, something you do for fun, not for writing serious code where you have a stake in the results.

Programming together with AI however, is a skill, mostly based on how well you can communicate (with machines or other humans) and how well your high-level software engineering skills are. You need to learn what it can and cannot do, before you can be effective with it.

[simonw]

I use "vibe coding" for when you prompt without even looking at the code - increasingly that means non-programmers are building code for themselves with zero understanding of how it actually works.

I call the act of using AI to help write code that you review, or managing a team of coding agents "AI-assisted programming", but that's not a snappy name at all. I've also skirted around the idea of calling it "vibe engineering" but I can't quite bring myself to commit to that: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/vibe-engineering/