Speak Your App into Existence: The Rise of Vibe Coding

Innovation Insights
Written By Sylvie Gendreau

Imagine describing your next app out loud —in any language you choose—almost like chatting with a teammate and watching the code assemble itself before your eyes. No more hunting for the right library: you simply “vibe” your requirements, and an AI takes over.

A developer sits at a desktop computer late at night, watching generated code appear on the screen

Photo : Pierre Guité & Mid-Journey -

Welcome to vibe coding, where prompts replace syntax wrestling and boilerplate drudgery. From scrappy startups slashing time-to-market to Fortune 500 labs accelerating prototyping, this paradigm shift redefines how software is born. In this article, we unpack the mechanics, real-world impact, and governance essentials of vibe coding—so you can decide how far you’ll let an AI craft your next innovation.

How natural-language prompts are reshaping software development

That’s the essence of vibe coding, a term popularized by Andrej Karpathy (formerly Tesla’s AI director and OpenAI co-founder). Instead of writing every line by hand, you type or speak a prompt:

“Build me a REST API that fetches weather data every hour and stores it in Postgres”

and a large language model (LLM) generates the scaffolding of routes, controllers, and database schemas. You run the prototype, tweak your prompt (handle network errors gracefully), and iterate until you feel that elusive “good vibe” between your intention and the code produced.

For newcomers, vibe coding is nothing short of magical: you don’t need to master a language’s arcane details to spin up an application. But even seasoned engineers welcome it when they want a solid first draft—one they can refine by hand.

Garry Tan, head of Y Combinator, insists that ten engineers using vibe coding “do the work we used to assign to teams of fifty to a hundred people. Some startups now claim as much as 95 percent of their code is AI-generated, slashing time-to-market without ballooning payroll.” (1)

On macOS, tools like Cursor, JetBrains AI and Raycast are leading the charge. Apple itself is teaming up with Anthropic to bake a chat interface and Claude Sonnet 4–powered Swift generator directly into Xcode.

Vibe coding in the enterprise

And it’s not just scrappy startups experimenting. Even large corporations have adopted it. At General Motors, developers use GitHub Copilot to ramp up skills faster, allowing them to start collaborating immediately with more experienced colleagues. New developers don’t have to devote as much time to structure or formatting—they can focus on adding value and validating code.

At ANZ Bank (an Australian bank), engineers divide tasks between humans and Copilot. The AI produces a template based on internal APIs, and humans focus on the final code. This has led to a significant increase in productivity and code quality, a result confirmed by an internal empirical study. (2)

At the Royal Bank of Canada, IT teams use the Cohere system, a secure environment where generative agents draft risk models, portfolio-analysis scripts, or customer-question templates from prompts. (4)

What can we conclude from these examples?

🟡 First drafts in minutes are no longer hype but reality.

🟡 Productivity jumps of 20–40 percent on routine code are common.

🟡 Governance is non-negotiable: automated tests, peer reviews, and traceability must guard against obscure bugs and security gaps. Shopify even makes AI use almost mandatory in initial development phases.

🟡 A hybrid model is emerging: vibe coding for prototypes, boilerplates, and internal dashboards, while critical code is still meticulously reviewed (or written by hand).

In sum, vibe coding is no longer a hackathon gimmick: when framed properly (security, review, traceability), it becomes a serious productivity accelerator.

Safeguards are essential

“Vibe coding can generate code beyond our own understanding,” Andrej Karpathy admits. And Simon Willison, a british coder, warns that “without review and testing, it’s pure vibe coding.” (5)

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke reinforces, “AI can fly the plane at times, but the pilot must still step in to ensure security.”

Identified pitfalls include security vulnerabilities, unpredictable performance, and runaway API costs.

“My team is roughly half the size it was last year,” one Amazon engineer told the New York Times, “but we’re expected to produce the same amount of code thanks to AI—the work has become more routine, less thoughtful, and much faster paced.” (6)

A Gradual but Inevitable Adoption

Born in the mid-2020s, vibe coding is now much more than a passing fad in the tech industry. This revolutionary approach, which generates code by simply describing intentions in natural language, is upending one of the most technical professions of our time.

Even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary recognized “vibe coding” as a trending term in spring 2025, indicating that this practice has leapt beyond the tech bubble.

Vibe coding shines for rapid demos, internal dashboards, and early-stage prototypes. But the human expert's eye remains indispensable when systems are safety-critical, performance-sensitive or heavily regulated.

The real challenge for organizations is striking the right balance—harnessing the creative flow of “vibe” without sacrificing traditional engineering discipline.

Experts agree on a scenario of gradual integration in the short to medium term. Vibe coding should quickly enrich developers’ toolkits, particularly for rapid prototyping and standard code generation. However, quality and security issues still require strict human oversight, especially for critical systems.

The industry considers sectoral specialization excellent for limited-lifespan projects or simple internal tools. This technology allows non-specialists to realize their software ideas. Complex systems, meanwhile, retain their proven methodologies.

As for total disruption—where AI would handle the bulk of development—it remains conditional on major breakthroughs in LLM reliability.

With adoption well underway across industries, the next question is how vibe coding will reshape software professionals' very roles and skill sets.

A close-up of a programmer’s focused expression as code reflects in his glasses.

A Profession in Transformation

This revolution is already transforming the roles of professionals. Developers are moving toward supervision, architecture, and validation functions, requiring a strengthening of core skills. Agile and DevOps methodologies are adapting to these new workflows, while developer experience now depends heavily on the quality of AI tools.

“Software engineers at Amazon say artificial intelligence is transforming their work — not by replacing them, but by pressuring them to code faster, meet higher output targets and rely more heavily on tools they don’t fully control, according to a report. (7)

“The shift has sparked growing concerns that AI is turning once-thoughtful work into an assembly line job, with some employees comparing it to the automation wave that reshaped Amazon’s warehouses. (8)

Computer science education faces a major challenge: training professionals capable of collaborating effectively with AI while mastering the timeless principles of software engineering.

Regulatory Challenges

Ethical, legal, and regulatory questions—intellectual property, algorithmic bias, liability, security—demand rigorous oversight. The industry must strike a delicate balance between innovation and responsibility, avoiding both over-regulation and laissez-faire.

The Balance Between “Vibe” and Reason

The success of vibe coding will rest on the technology ecosystem’s ability to reconcile creativity with rigor. Developers, companies, researchers, and regulators will need to navigate this transition together, combining enthusiasm for innovation with the imperative of quality and ethics.

This new era of software development promises immense potential—provided it is guided by continuous learning and enlightened governance.

“Some of the grunt work you’re doing as part of programming is going to get better. So maybe it’ll be more fun to program over time—no different from Google Docs making it easier to write”, said Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet. (9)

By embracing vibe coding with clear rules, rigorous testing and continuous oversight, companies can unlock new levels of agility—while still ensuring their software stands on solid ground.

So here’s the question for leaders and innovators: how far would you let an AI handle your code before stepping in?

Additional Resources:

Mr Tony Momoh, Apple’s Silent Revolution. Partnership with Anthropic’s Claude, AI Mind, May 2025
The PyCoach, A Simple Guide to Vibe Coding for Beginners, Artificial Corner, Medium, May 2025

Sylvie Gendreau
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