Vibe Coding: Hastings’ Guide to AI-Powered Creativity
Andrej Karpathy, who is well-known in the tech community, has coined the innovative term "Vibe Coding." He is also the founder of Eureka Labs, a newly established company focused on the intersection of artificial intelligence and education. This initiative aims to explore new possibilities and advancements in the way we learn and engage with technology. AI image by HastingsNow.com.
Imagine “coding” a new website or app by simply chatting about your idea, the same way you’d chat with a friend over coffee. No fiddling with semicolons, no digging through manuals – just telling an AI what you want and watching it build your vision. It sounds like sci-fi, but this playful new approach, dubbed “vibe coding,” is turning heads in the tech world and beyond. In fact, it’s so new that it was coined just this year by a well-known AI researcher. So what is vibe coding, how did it start, and why might it matter for folks here in Hastings? Let’s dive into the story of vibe coding – from its quirky Silicon Valley origin to how our local businesses and creators can ride this wave of creativity.
What is “Vibe Coding” and Where Did It Come From?
The term “vibe coding” was introduced in early 2025 by Andrej Karpathy, a respected computer scientist (and co-founder of OpenAI). Karpathy jokingly described a new kind of programming experience: “fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists” simonwillison.net. In other words, he found himself building software by just talking and “vibing” with an AI, instead of painstakingly writing and reviewing lines of code. How is this possible? Advances in large language models (LLMs) – the AI tech behind tools like ChatGPT – have made it feasible to describe what you want in plain English and have the machine generate the code for you en.wikipedia.org. Karpathy literally speaks to his coding assistant (using voice recognition) and the AI writes the actual code, so he “barely even touch[es] the keyboard” simonwillison.net!
To Karpathy, vibe coding felt less like traditional programming and more like collaborating with an extremely helpful (and fast) robot partner. “It’s not really coding – I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff, and it mostly works,” he quipped en.wikipedia.org. He would casually ask for even the tiniest changes – “decrease the padding on the sidebar by half” – things a normal coder might spend time hunting down in CSS simonwillison.net. The AI would oblige, he’d hit “Accept All” on the changes without even reading them, and voila! When errors cropped up, he’d simply paste the error message back into the AI and ask it to fix it. The result? In Karpathy’s experience, the code grew and evolved to make a working project, while he mostly steered by vibe (requesting what felt right) rather than by meticulous coding. He admits this approach isn’t perfect for every case – sometimes the AI gets stuck on a bug that he then has to work around – but for quick “throwaway weekend projects” it turned out “quite amusing” and effective en.wikipedia.org. In short, vibe coding is what you get when coding meets a “go with the flow” attitude, empowered by very smart AI helpers.
An example of vibe coding in action: An AI assistant (ChatGPT) is asked to “Write a JavaScript function to shuffle a deck of cards.” The AI generates the full solution code with an explanation and example output. The human just provided the request – the AI handled the actual coding! en.wikipedia.org
Karpathy’s playful tweet about this phenomenon went viral in tech circles pcworld.compcworld.com. He jokingly named it “vibe coding” and, much to his surprise, the term stuck. Within days, developers everywhere were talking about it, sharing their own “vibey” coding experiments. By mid-March 2025, “vibe coding” had appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Ars Technica – even Merriam-Webster added it as a trending new term in their dictionary simonwillison.net, en.wikipedia.org. What started as a lighthearted observation turned into a mini-movement in the programming world.
From Tweet to Movement: Why Everyone’s Buzzing About Vibe Coding
Vibe coding is having a moment simonwillison.net – and not just among seasoned coders. The excitement around this concept comes from the realization that anyone (not just pro developers) might soon be able to create software by talking or typing natural language prompts. It’s a dramatic expansion of the long-running no-code/low-code trend. We’ve already seen years of tools that let you build websites or apps with drag-and-drop simplicity. Vibe coding takes it a step further: you don’t even need to drag a widget or navigate a menu – you just describe what you want, and the AI does the heavy lifting en.wikipedia.org.
Early adopters have been amazed at how quickly they can spin up working projects this way. One tech writer said vibe coding felt “intoxicatingly easy” – he simply described a web app idea to an AI-powered IDE and had a functional app running in 30 minutes uxdesign.ccuxdesign.cc. “No more syntax struggles. No more Stack Overflow deep dives at 2 AM. Just vibes,” as another observer put it uxdesign.cc. And it’s not just pros having fun; beginners and non-coders are jumping in too. In The New York Times, tech columnist Kevin Roose (who isn’t a professional programmer) managed to vibe-code a few simple personal apps, including a quirky “LunchBox Buddy” that scanned his fridge contents to suggest lunch recipes en.wikipedia.org. He coined the phrase “software for one” for these small-scale, custom tools – the kind of one-off apps you’d never find in an app store, but you might create for your own needs en.wikipedia.org. Roose did find that the results could be hit-or-miss (one experiment even had the AI inadvertently generating some fictional data in a prototype e-commerce site!) and he notes that vibe coding is “better suited for hobby projects” than mission-critical software en.wikipedia.org. Still, the fact that he – a self-confessed non-coder – could get workable results at all is testament to how far this technology has come.
Tech enthusiasts are comparing vibe coding to other creative revolutions we’ve seen in recent years. One designer likened it to the way smartphone cameras and Instagram filters made photography accessible to everyone uxdesign.cc. Just as “everyone’s a photographer” now, vibe coding suggests “everyone can be a developer” – at least for simpler projects. We’ve progressed from the days of only expert programmers building software, to the era of low-code/no-code tools in the 2010s, and now to AI-driven development in the 2020s uxdesign.cc. The trajectory is clear: each step has democratized the ability to create tech. As one analysis put it, thanks to advanced AI platforms, “anyone can take their app or software idea to execution within minutes” uxdesign.cc. Advocates say vibe coding could allow even amateur tinkerers to produce software without the years of training that used to be required en.wikipedia.org.
Indeed, people are already sharing stories of how vibe coding empowered them to create things they never thought they could. One hobbyist reported that after embracing the vibe coding mindset, he rapidly built a bunch of projects in languages he barely knew – from a personal website, to a tabletop gaming helper, to a small video game – just by continually prompting the AI and iterating pcworld.compcworld.com. “The most important part? It was fun!” he wrote, describing how the process reignited his joy for making things, without the usual frustration pcworld.com. That fun, experimental spirit is at the heart of vibe coding. It turns coding into a bit of a game: you throw an idea at the AI, see what it comes up with, then refine or fix it together in a back-and-forth dialog. It’s a creative conversation between you and the computer. Sure, there are pitfalls – the AI might misinterpret something or produce buggy code – but proponents will tell you that’s part of the adventure. (Think of it like an improv partner who sometimes goes off script – occasionally messy, but often surprisingly brilliant.) And because you can always ask the AI to explain or adjust the code, you’re constantly learning along the way medium.com. One writer said it’s like “learning to cook by watching a chef” – you pick up new techniques by observing the AI, even if you didn’t know them beforehand medium.com.
Why Vibe Coding Matters in Hastings
At this point you might be thinking, “Alright, vibe coding sounds neat for Silicon Valley folks, but what does it have to do with Hastings, Minnesota?” The short answer: opportunity. Vibe coding might sound high-tech, but it’s really about making tech creation more accessible to everyone – and that includes our community here in Hastings. You don’t need to work at Google or have a computer science degree to benefit from it. All you need is an idea and a willingness to tinker in conversation with an AI.
Hastings is a place bursting with creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. We have artists, small business owners, teachers, students, and hobbyists – all brimming with ideas that could be amplified with a little tech magic. Vibe coding offers a friendly new way to bring those ideas to life. It lowers the barrier to try something new. As one expert noted, this AI-driven approach means “domain experts can build tools to solve specific problems without learning Python. Entrepreneurs can validate concepts without hiring engineering teams.” uxdesign.cc In other words, you as a local shop owner, event organizer, or creator can use vibe coding to skip the hard parts and get straight to the fun part – making something useful or cool for your business or community.
Let’s make it concrete. Here are a few examples of how vibe coding could spark innovation around Hastings:
🚀 Instant Websites for Local Businesses & Events: No web developer? No problem. With vibe coding, you could describe the website you want and let an AI build the basics. For instance, a Hastings boutique owner might say, “Make me a simple website with our store hours, a photo gallery of new arrivals, and a contact form,” and watch as an AI helper generates the site framework. One tech blogger actually did something similar – he dumped his old website content into an AI and asked it to rebuild the site, and within a couple of hours he had a fresh site he “liked even better” than the original pcworld.com. Imagine our local festival organizers doing the same for a weekend event page or a charity fundraiser – a few prompts to set it up, then tweak the details by chatting with the AI. By evening, your event has a live webpage, and you didn’t have to touch a single
<div>orCSSfile.📣 Social Media Content on Tap: Hastings has a tight-knit community vibe, and many of our local businesses thrive through Facebook and Instagram. Vibe coding can extend to content creation too (in spirit, if not in literal code). Think of an AI as your creative assistant: you can ask it for catchy captions, blog post drafts, or even simple logo designs. While this isn’t “coding,” the workflow is similar – you describe the vibe of the post you want (“upbeat, local pride, mentions our weekend sale on artisan coffee”), and the AI generates options for you. This frees up time so our shop owners and community managers can focus on interacting with customers rather than wordsmithing every post from scratch. It’s like having a marketing intern who works 24/7 and never runs out of enthusiasm for hashtags.
🎨 Interactive Art & Education: Hastings is known for its beautiful river views and vibrant arts scene. Imagine adding a tech twist to that creativity. With a bit of vibe coding, a local artist might create an interactive art installation on a website – for example, a generative art piece where shapes and colors respond to the local weather or to live music. Normally, coding something like that would be daunting, but by describing the concept to an AI (“make the background change color with the temperature” or “draw patterns that pulse with a drumbeat”), the artist could prototype it without delving into JavaScript manuals. Similarly, educators in our schools could whip up simple educational games or simulations by talking through their idea with an AI. How about a custom trivia game app about Hastings history, built as a class project, where the teacher guides the AI to code it? These projects can engage people in new ways – and they become more feasible when an AI is handling the complex code under the hood.
💡 DIY Tools for Everyday Needs: Ever thought, “I wish there was an app for ___” about some local need? Vibe coding empowers you to try making that app yourself (with AI’s help). Maybe it’s a “Hastings Trails Tracker” that maps your bike rides along the Mississippi, or a simple inventory program for your Main Street shop, or a bot that texts out the daily special from the café. You can start by telling an AI what you envision. For example: “I need a tool where I can enter my store’s inventory and it will alert me when stock is low.” In a traditional world, you’d have to hire a programmer for that. But with a vibe coding approach, you could get a basic version generated by AI and then refine it. It’s surprisingly feasible – people have vibe-coded all sorts of little tools (dice rollers for games, budget trackers, you name it) without knowing the programming language at all pcworld.com. For a community like ours, this means the power to solve local problems can lie in anyone’s hands, not just the “tech folks.”
The big picture here is that vibe coding can amplify our community’s ingenuity. Hastings has always been a DIY kind of town – we fix things, we start projects, we support our local makers. Vibe coding fits right into that spirit by enabling a kind of digital do-it-yourself. It invites more people into the sandbox of creating with technology, without requiring formal coding skills. And importantly, it’s fun. Instead of being intimidated by technology, people find it enjoyable to see an AI bring their ideas to life (sometimes in ways that even make them laugh). It turns software creation into a collaborative, almost artistic process. As one writer said, vibe coding lets you focus on the idea and the experience you want to create, rather than getting bogged down in technical details medium.com. It’s like being the architect of a project, with a very capable (if somewhat unpredictable) construction crew carrying out your vision. For Hastings’ many visionary minds, that could open up some exciting possibilities.
Getting Started: Tools and Resources for Vibe Coding
You might be thinking, “Alright, I’m sold – how do I actually do this vibe coding thing?” The good news is you don’t need much to start. Many of the AI tools you need are available for free or have free versions. Here’s a quick guide to dipping your toes into vibe coding:
🤖 Chat with AI Coding Assistants: One of the simplest ways to try vibe coding is to use a conversational AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude. You can literally go to a website (for example, chat.openai.com for ChatGPT) and start describing what you want in plain English. “Please create a simple HTML page for a bakery with a welcome message and a list of today’s pastries,” for instance. Models like GPT-4 or Claude are quite capable of spitting out the code. They’ll even explain it if you ask. This is a very beginner-friendly approach – it feels like texting with a very knowledgeable friend who just happens to speak HTML, Python, or whatever language you need.
👩💻 AI-Powered Coding Apps (Replit, Cursor, etc.): If you want a more tailored coding experience, there are specialized tools designed for vibe coding workflows. Replit is a great online platform that lets you code in your browser, and it has an AI mode (Replit’s Ghostwriter/Chat) that can generate and modify code based on prompts. Another tool is Cursor (the one Karpathy used), an AI-assisted code editor where you can type or speak commands and see the AI’s changes in real-time. These environments are a half-step between pure no-code and coding – you see the code and can run it, but you rely on the AI to write most of it. Many developers are experimenting with these, and popular options include Replit’s AI, Cursor with its “Composer” AI, and other newcomers like Bolt, Lovable or Pythagora medium.com. Most of these tools leverage the big AI models under the hood (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.), but package them in a user-friendly interface for creating software. Some even integrate speech, so you can talk out loud and code hands-free, which is a wild experience the first time you try it!
🌐 No-Code AI Website Builders: If your goal is specifically a website and you truly want to avoid code altogether, check out AI-powered website builders like Durable or Wix ADI. These are services where you input a few details (e.g. “I own a vintage candy shop, I need a website with a home page, about us, and contact info”) and the AI generates an entire website design with content for you. It’s not exactly “vibe coding” in the original sense (since it’s more form-based), but the ethos is the same – minimal effort, the AI does 90% of the work. You can then tweak text or images to your liking. It’s a great way to quickly get an online presence. Some users report getting a decent website in 30 seconds using these tools (of course, you’ll spend a bit more time customizing it, but still!) – truly embracing the “why do it by hand when AI can help” philosophy.
🎥 Learn from Tutorials and Communities: As vibe coding has exploded in popularity, a lot of helpful content is popping up to guide newcomers. If you prefer video learning, search YouTube for “vibe coding tutorial” or “AI builds my app” – you’ll find folks walking through their process step by step. For example, there’s a great demo of building a full app with AI assistance in under an hour, which can show you what the back-and-forth with the AI actually looks like in practice. Blogging platforms like Medium and dev.to also have write-ups from developers who share tips and pitfalls they encountered. Reading a couple of these can give you ideas on how to phrase your prompts or how to handle it when the AI’s output isn’t exactly what you wanted. (Pro-tip: Start with small projects to build your confidence. Maybe have the AI make a simple webpage or calculator first, before you try something more complex like a full e-commerce site.) And don’t be shy about asking the AI to explain the code it gives you – it’s a great way to learn. As one author noted, you can actually pick up programming concepts by observing and querying the AI, almost like pair-programming with an expert medium.com.
Finally, if you run into snags or have questions, there are growing communities online around these tools. Forums and subreddits for ChatGPT or AI-assisted coding are full of people sharing their successes and failures. The vibe (pun intended) is very encouraging – everyone’s figuring this out together, so even the “silliest” question is welcome.
Embrace the Vibe: Your Turn to Create!
The rise of vibe coding is a reminder that technology is becoming more human-friendly and creative. It’s turning software development from a closed world of complex code into an open playground where ideas and “good vibes” matter more than technical know-how. For Hastings, this means our community’s imagination is truly the limit. We can solve problems, start new projects, and express our local pride through tech in ways that were hard to imagine just a couple of years ago – and we can do it together, learning as we go.
So here’s a friendly challenge as we wrap up: Give vibe coding a try in your next project. Maybe it’s that website you’ve been putting off, or an interactive map for the next Hastings Prescott Area Arts Council event, or even a just-for-fun app that tells you what coffee drink matches today’s weather on Second Street. You don’t need to commit a ton of time – even one evening of experimenting with an AI tool could bring your idea to life. The goal isn’t to churn out perfect software; it’s to explore and see what’s possible when you “embrace the vibes” of creative codings imonwillison.net.
And when you do create something – no matter how small – we’d love to hear about it! 💬 Share your vibe coding adventures with us at HastingsNow.com or on social media. Show off that quirky app or shiny new website. Ask for feedback, inspire someone else, and help build a community of Hastings “vibe coders” who are leading the way in this new era of AI-powered creativity. Who knows – your experiment could spark the next great idea to benefit our town. At the very least, you’ll have a cool story to tell and a new skill under your belt.
In the spirit of vibe coding, the only limit is your imagination. So go on, follow the vibes and see where they lead you – Hastings is ready to cheer you on every step of the way. 🎉
