'Vibe Coding' Meaning: Why This AI Associated Term Has Just Been Crowned Word of the Year

The uncanny dependence on artificial intelligence has changed how we build software and also how we talk about it now it seems. As in 2025, the term 'vibe coding' was crowned the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year which shows how quickly AI is revolutionising tech language and culture.

Basically, vibe coding describes a change in programming, where rather than manually typing every line of code, users now describe what they want in natural language, and then an AI system translates that request into functioning code. It is that major tweak in the role of the human going from coder to prompter that shows the ever changing relationship between human creativity and machine intelligence.

What is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding isn't simply another viral word as it shows a real disruption in how technology and artificial intelligence integrate into software development. The now viral term was coined by Andrej Karpathy who is former AI director at Tesla and founding team member at OpenAI according to his own X account, in February 2025.

Basically he explained that there's a new style of programming he calls 'vibe coding,' where you stop obsessing over the details and let the flow take over. This is because modern LLMs like Cursor Composer with Sonnet as per his example, have become shockingly capable, and he claimed that barely touches the keyboard anymore.

Moreover, he simply talks to Composer through SuperWhisper and gives casual instructions such as 'cut the sidebar padding in half' instead of rummaging through the code himself.

Furthermore, he accepts every suggestion without even checking the diffs. So if and when an error pops up, he just drops the message back into the model and it usually sorts itself out as per his claim.

The project grows in ways he doesn't fully track, and he'd have to sit down and study the code to really understand it. And surprisingly when the model can't fix a bug, he either works around it or keeps prompting random tweaks until the problem disappears. As per his description it's fine for quick weekend builds, and is actually pretty entertaining. He's technically creating a web app as per his idea, but it doesn't feel like coding, rather it's more like looking at things, giving instructions, running them, and copying whatever's needed until it all comes together.

Vibe Coding vs Regular Coding

In regular coding, you write precise instructions in a programming language, compile or execute them, debug errors, and iterate. However, in vibe coding, you start with a high level prompt like 'build me an inventory tracker that notifies me when stock is low', and a large language model (LLM) or AI agent generates much of the code, file structure, and logic for you.

Furthermore, this means the barrier to creating applications lowers massively as product managers, designers, or domain experts who aren't deep in syntax can direct the coding process through conversational interaction. So it's no longer just about tech literate developers as the integration of AI thus becomes not only a tool but a shift in mindset and the language plain English for instance becomes the interface for technology to interpret intent.

More importantly, Collins declared vibe coding the Word of the Year because it captured this change in how technology, culture, and language intersect. In the larger picture of artificial intelligence and tech, vibe coding shows that software development is moving toward automation, abstraction, and even creativity driven workflows, rather than purely technical ones. Hence, it shows both the promise and the disruption of AI in technology.