Vibe coding writes your code. It can't make your calls.
It can replace you at the keyboard. It cannot replace you at the decisions that make a product right for its users.
"Vibe coding"1 started as a joke and became a job description. You describe what you want, the model writes it, you run it, you describe what's wrong. For a lot of software that loop is now faster than typing the code yourself.
01What changed
The cost of producing code dropped close to zero. A working prototype that took a team a week now takes one person an afternoon. That is real, and pretending otherwise is nostalgia.
What did not drop is the cost of deciding what to build. That cost moved from the middle of the work to the beginning and the end: choosing the problem, and judging whether the result is right.
The model can sit in your chair. It can't sit in your user's.
02Where it stops
A model will happily give you an export function, a database schema, a pricing page. It will not tell you that your users export on deadline at 2 a.m., that the schema can't survive the second customer, or that your price is wrong for the market you're in. Those are business calls, and they come from knowing the people you build for.
Vibe coding raises the floor. It makes it possible for more people to ship something. It does not raise the ceiling on its own, because the ceiling is set by judgment. The way we build with models keeps moving up a level, from the prompt to the graph; I break that down in SC.03.
03The domain test
Screenwriting is a good example because its rules are invisible to outsiders. A page is roughly a minute of screen time2. Scene headings, character cues and transitions follow conventions that producers read at a glance. Break them and the script reads as amateur before anyone gets to the story.
INT. EDIT BAY — NIGHT
A model can format this line.
It doesn't know why it matters that it lands on page 1.
You can ask a model to "format a screenplay" and get something that looks right. Knowing what the writer needs when a scene moves, a revision goes out or a page count matters is domain knowledge. Without it, AI only helps you build the wrong thing faster. It's the same argument I make on stage in the keynote from Lumière to AI.
04Sources
- 1The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy in February 2025. Wikipedia, Vibe coding
- 2A rule of thumb: actual runtime often differs. Wikipedia, Screenplay