Vibe Code to Explore What Can Be Automated But Don't Become a Human Clipboard
AI amplifies intent
AI is an intention amplifier. If your intention is to be more productive, AI will amplify your productivity. If your intention is to learn, AI will amplify your learning. If you intention is to save mental energy, AI will amplify your mental energy savings.
Our intention at Continue is to amplify developers, not replace them.
Vibe code with the intention of playing around
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…
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) February 2, 2025
Playing around with a technology is a great way to discover its possibilities and limitations. Tricking out a .vimrc file, creating the perfect Makefile, installing a bunch of VS Code extensions are all examples of playing around to find out what's possible.
These side quests often feel like a way to avoid important tasks, but they actually enable us to automate more of our workflows. By spending our time exploring our tools, we discover how we might do more with even less keystrokes.
Vibe coding can be used in the same way. You can both have a great time watching an idea come to life despite barely touching the keyboard and use that experience to sharpen your intuition for what AI can reliably automate in your development process.
But don't let it turn you into a human clipboard
If you embrace vibes too much and don't make the effort to also learn along the way, then vibe coding can turn you into a “human clipboard”.
As a developer, you are responsible for all production code you ship. If you don't understand your code, you can't own your uptime. So when your app goes down and people depend on it, you won't know how to debug and fix it.
This is why Andrej Karapthy, who coined the term "vibe coding", emphasizes that vibe coding is not the only way to use AI while coding.
Noticing myself adopting a certain rhythm in AI-assisted coding (i.e. code I actually and professionally care about, contrast to vibe code).
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) April 25, 2025
1. Stuff everything relevant into context (this can take a while in big projects. If the project is small enough just stuff everything…
If you shift your intention from purely vibing to also learning along the way, it requires a bit more effort but also makes it possible to write high-quality production code. Some call this AI-assisted programming; I prefer AI-native development at this point. All of these names are likely temporary anyway.
By amplifying yourself with AI-native development, you will become better at your craft. The reduced but not completely removed friction of AI-native development is uncomfortable but not unbearable—exactly what you need to grow as a developer.
It’s all just coding anyway
“Vibe coding” is quickly becoming “coding”. It's merging with AI-assisted programming, AI-native development, etc. It will eventually just be how we code, rather than the exception. In different situations, you’ll adjust your approach; sometimes never looking at the code at all and other times going through every line with a fine-tooth comb.
For now, just press the “Continue” button while playing around with vibe coding and amplify yourself with AI-native development when working on production software. At some point, you will no longer make this distinction. You’ll just be coding and the vibes of this transition to an AI-native world become distant memories.