Vibe Coding Has Two Meanings — Which One Are You Using?

A recent post on r/LocalLLaMA highlights a semantic problem in the AI coding community: the term 'vibe coding' refers to two distinct things, causing unnecessary friction in communication. The author breaks down the two meanings:

Meaning 1: Careless Dumping

Code thrown together without care, dumped entirely on the AI. The developer lacks understanding or interest in making code good, modular, or robust. This is the pejorative sense.

Meaning 2: Significant AI Assistance

Heavy use of AI to write code, but with oversight and engineering standards. The developer remains engaged and ensures quality.

The author notes that when Andrej Karpathy (popularizer of 'vibe coding') uses the term, he likely means Meaning 2 — especially for projects he intends to keep. The post speculates that an advanced AI agent loop that writes all code, runs a 'bad guy bot' to check for good software engineering practices, and uses state-of-the-art libraries could produce code nearly as far from Meaning 1 as fully human-written code.

The key takeaway: clarify which sense you mean when discussing vibe coding. The ambiguity undermines productive debate about AI's role in development.