The guy who coined vibe coding says AI is making programming 'unrecognizable'
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- OpenAI and Tesla alum Andrej Karpathy wrote that there was no more "business as usual" in software, thanks to AI.
- AI agents are "extremely disruptive to the default programming workflow," Karpathy wrote on X.
- Karpathy, who coined "vibe coding," said that technical expertise was still a "multiplier."
The AI coding timeline is accelerating, according to the guy who coined "vibe coding."
Andrej Karpathy has a long list of AI bona fides. He was a founding member of OpenAI, left to lead AI at Tesla, then returned to the ChatGPT-maker and eventually started his own lab. In early 2025, he introduced the term vibe coding into the zeitgeist.
In his latest X post, Karpathy described a speed-up in agentic coding, one that has taken place in just a few months. "Coding agents basically didn't work before December and basically work since," he wrote.
These agents are "extremely disruptive to the default programming workflow," Karpathy wrote.
He gave an example. Over the weekend, Karpathy said he used AI to make a video analysis dashboard for his home cameras. His AI agent completed it in 30 minutes, encountering errors and researching solutions. It was all hands-free, he wrote.
"Programming is becoming unrecognizable," Karpathy wrote. "This is nowhere near 'business as usual' time in software."
Posts like these are now Karpathy's specialty: long, multi-paragraph takes on the state of software engineering. In one recent post, the creator of Claude Code commented that Karpathy always had a "very thoughtful and well reasoned take."
In the comments on this post, an AI developer asked about the state of software engineers. "Are teams of hundreds of people going to be replaced by a few chosen prompters?" they asked.
"Vibe coders are now able to get somewhere, but at the top tiers, deep technical expertise may be even more of a multiplier than before because of the added leverage," Karpathy responded.
Some big names in AI aren't so thrilled with Karpathy's linguistic invention. OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger called vibe coding "a slur," arguing that it implied coding with AI was easy and didn't still involve real work.
In another comment, Karpathy referenced an old Tesla slogan: "Every action is error." The goal is to arrange your agents so you can "remove yourself as the bottleneck," he wrote.
For many, coding with AI can feel fantastical. Karpathy offered a quick reality check: the agents require "high-level direction" and (the frequently memed) "taste."
"It's not magic, it's delegation," he wrote.