Vibe Coding: The Fast Track to Software (With a Few Bumps)

Friday, June 20, 2025

Meet vibe coding—the AI-powered way to build apps by describing what you want in plain English. From an $80M Israeli startup acquisition to the rise of AI-native development tools, here’s the lowdown on this fast but still-evolving coding revolution.

🚀 Meet Vibe Coding: Software Development’s New Groove

Picture this: telling an AI exactly what kind of app or feature you want—and poof—it writes the code for you. That’s vibe coding in a nutshell. Popularized by Andrej Karpathy (the ex-head of AI at Tesla and part-time viral sensation), vibe coding lets you skip the "how" and focus on the "what," making app-building faster and accessible even if you don’t speak fluent code.

“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.” — Andrej Karpathy on Twitter, 2025

Want to deep dive? Check out Karpathy’s talk at YCombinator’s AI school where he lays it all out.

🛠️ Why Startups Are Buzzing About Vibe Coding

Israeli startup Base44 made headlines by selling to Wix for a cool $80M just six months after launch. The 31-year-old solopreneur behind it, Maor Shlomo — who rocked another startup called Explorium — built Base44 as a vibe coding platform. At acquisition, they had 250,000+ users and were turning a tidy profit ($189K in May alone).

Base44 isn’t unique. It's riding a wave of vibe coding tools that let you spin up software by writing prompts instead of lines of code.

Startup Goldmine: What vibe coding unlocks

  • Democratizing Development: Tools like Lovable.dev, Bolt, and Base44 target users beyond hardcore devs — think product managers, analysts, and low-coders — with intuitive, prompt-driven app builders.

  • Custom Project Generators (Generative Scaffolding): Forget rigid templates. Imagine saying "a TypeScript API server with Supabase, Clerk, and Stripe" and getting a tailored scaffold. Tempo Labs, Bolt.new, and Replit are already fans.

  • Full-Stack Application Builders: Some tools let you crank out entire full-stack apps in a day using prompts. Visual editing + AI magic combine in tools like Gemini Canvas, Rork, and Bolt.diy.

  • AI-Native IDEs & Extensions: The usual suspects — Cursor, Windsurf, Amp, Augment, Cody — are evolving into robo-coding sidekicks with features like chat modes, code analysis, and autonomous coding agents.

  • Version Control Reinvented: As AI stitches together code, there’s buzz around AI-first Git systems that track bundled prompts+tests and tag changes by agent or human oversight.

  • Conversational Dashboards: Why stare at boring graphs when AI can help synthesize data and suggest metrics? Dual-mode interfaces could juggle humans and agents.

  • Interactive Docs & Secret Management: Docs become dynamic knowledge bases for AI agents, and secret handling moves beyond static .env files, adding scoped, revocable tokens.

  • Accessibility for Agents: Using APIs, AI agents can understand apps semantically, not just by pixels, opening a new "render surface" for software.

  • Asynchronous Agent Orchestrators: AI agents running in the background can triage bugs and interpret designs seamlessly thanks to orchestration layers.

  • Model Context Protocol (MCP): An emerging universal standard enabling modular, contextual agent interactions with real-world systems.

  • Abstracted Primitives for Agents: Like devs rely on services (payments, auth), agents will too — startups are building clean, composable APIs tailored for AI consumption.

Sure, it's a spicy meatball of innovation, but vibe coding is more than just coded shortcuts. Think of it as prompt engineering for software creation, the tip of the AI iceberg.

⚠️ The Reality Check: Pitfalls of Vibe Coding

Before you throw out your IDE, here are some speed bumps on this AI-powered highway:

  • Prompt Engineering Matters: Garbage in, garbage out is the name of the game. Clear, specific prompts equal better code. Ambiguity? Expect wonky results.

  • Code Validation is Crucial: No AI is a magic bullet (yet). Human review is still the gatekeeper for security, performance, and correctness. Martin Casado wisely says AI can dazzle but may flub the fundamentals, potentially churning buggy or vulnerable code.

  • Context Is King (and a Challenge): As projects grow, keeping AI updated with constant context gets tricky. Tools like Cursor may need manual rules and context files because large language models don’t always reason through complex dependencies well.

  • Inconsistent Output: Even the same prompt might yield different AI code. Daniel Jackson weighs in: “mostly works” isn’t good enough for most applications.

  • Scaling Complexity: Handling sprawling codebases with many dependencies? Still an uphill climb.

  • Cost vs. Use Case: Many tools shine brightest at Day 0 (greenfield projects) but fall short on Day 1+ (bug fixes, scaling, collaboration).

  • Versioning and Documentation Still Needed: AI-generated code must align with your team practices to avoid chaos.

  • Regulatory Compliance: Human oversight remains mandatory in sectors like finance, even when AI scaffolds code.

Pro tip: AI can generate truckloads of broken code without supervision, so buckle up!

🧰 Vibe Coding Landscape & Tools to Watch

Here’s a taste of the vibe coding ecosystem (with thanks to Tim Mitchell and Nufar Gaspar for their stellar overviews):

Vibe Coding Tools Source: Tim Mitchell

Vibe Coding Landscape Vibe Coding market map by Nufar Gaspar

And for the broader developer AI scene, a16z’s Nine emerging developer patterns for the AI era is a must-read.

💡 Why You Should Care

  • If you’re a founder or startup hustling to build MVPs fast, vibe coding tools can slash your dev costs and speed up iterations.

  • Product folks, analysts, and even non-coders get a shot at software creation without diving deep into syntax.

  • Dev teams should embrace these tools as agents for automating the tedious stuff, but keep your trusty code reviewers close.

  • Investors, keep an eye on this space — it’s heating up with acquisitions like Base44 moving the needle.

🔮 The Future: Vibe Coding is Just the Beginning

Vibe coding signals a shift from writing code by hand to nurturing AI partners that help build software. This isn’t replacing developers yet, but it will reshape how teams architect, design, and maintain code.

It’s like moving from driving a manual stick shift to using an autopilot that still needs some nudging and supervision. Fast, exciting, and with some bumps on the road ahead.

Ready to vibe? Keep your prompts clear, and your human insight sharper.

👤 Article by Eze Vidra — managing partner at Remagine Ventures, tech enthusiast, and keen observer of AI's impact on startups.

⚙️ Bonus: Quick Social Sharing

Feel free to share this on your favorite networks and spread the vibe!

Happy Vibe Coding! 🎉

Source: VC Cafe