You know that feeling when you type something into ChatGPT or Cursor, and code just appears? Like magic. No manual. No Stack Overflow scrolling. Just you, typing what you want, and boom — it works.
That’s vibe coding. And I decided to try it seriously for a week.
What is vibe coding?
Basically, it’s writing software without really writing code. You describe what you want. The AI builds it. You tweak a few things. You ship it.
No deep understanding of what’s happening under the hood. No reading documentation. Just vibes.
The experiment
I built a small side project — a simple dashboard for tracking freelance invoices. Normally, I’d spend hours setting up React, configuring Tailwind, writing the components from scratch.
This time? I opened Cursor, told it what I wanted, and watched it type.
And you know what? It worked. I had a working prototype in 2 hours.
The good stuff
- Speed is insane. What used to take me a weekend now takes an evening.
- It removes friction. Starting a project is no longer intimidating.
- You learn by accident. Even when vibe coding, you absorb patterns just by reading the output.
But here’s the problem
When something broke — and things always break — I had no idea how to fix it.
The AI would give me a solution, I’d paste it, and sometimes it worked. Sometimes it made things worse. I was essentially playing hot potato with my own code.
That’s not coding. That’s gambling with extra steps.
What I learned
Vibe coding is powerful, but it needs guardrails:
- Know the basics. Understanding how the web works, what HTTP is, how React renders — that’s not optional. The AI amplifies your knowledge, it doesn’t replace learning.
- Verify everything. Don’t ship what you don’t understand. Read the code. Ask the AI to explain it.
- Use it for scaffolding, not finishing. Let AI do the boring parts. You do the thinking parts.
The verdict
I’m not dropping AI tools. They’re too useful. But I’m done pretending I don’t need to understand what I’m building.
Vibe coding is real. It’s here. And it’s going to change how we work. But the developers who thrive will be the ones who use AI as a lever — not a crutch.
The code still needs to live in your head. At least enough of it.