Vibe Coding: What If We’ve Been Doing It All Along ?
What is Vibe Coding, exactly?
Vibe coding is that almost mystical moment when you’re writing code without a real plan, without a well-groomed backlog, and without solid functional specs. Just you, your IDE, a lo-fi playlist in the background, and a bit of inspiration. You’re coding by instinct, going with the flow, reacting to vague product needs — or worse, to urgent tickets thrown at you last minute.
No upfront technical design, no documented architecture, no solid sprint planning. Just code emerging from the chaos, driven by passion, adrenaline, or sheer necessity.
Is vibe coding just a niche thing?
You might think vibe coding is something only freelancers or indie hackers do late at night on their side projects. But in reality, it’s way more common than we like to admit.
If you’ve ever worked in:
- An early-stage startup where “the priority is to ship fast”
- A scale-up constantly chasing OKRs and reinventing its own org chart every other quarter
- A corporate environment where processes exist… but no one really follows them
- A small agency or consultancy that’s been “discovering Agile” for the past decade
…chances are, you’ve been vibe coding too — maybe for years.
Monsieur Jourdain, but make it developer edition
In Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Monsieur Jourdain is shocked to learn he’s been speaking prose his whole life without knowing it.
Well, what if we, as developers, have been vibe coding all along without realizing it? We thought we were “doing Agile” because we had daily stand-ups and a “Done” column in Jira, but in truth, we were just improvising. Reacting. Surviving.
Is vibe coding a problem?
Not necessarily. Vibe coding can be exciting, liberating, and sometimes even productive — in the short term. It fuels creativity, helps unblock situations quickly, and can lead to brilliant ideas.
But in the medium or long term, it comes at a cost:
- Technical debt piling up
- Features that are hard to maintain
- Onboarding nightmares for new developers
- Lack of testing or flaky test coverage
- Weak alignment between product and engineering
That’s why teams who vibe code (without knowing it) often end up hitting a wall — and only then start looking for structure.
How to move past vibe coding (or make peace with it)
If vibe coding is part of your daily life, here are a few ways to contain its chaos:
- Set up alignment rituals (retros, tech refinement sessions, RFCs)
- Document your technical decisions — even after the fact
- Build in time to think before coding
- Encourage collaborative code reviews
- Start cultivating a shared product-tech culture
Vibe coding isn’t a sin. It’s a stage — one that many teams pass through. But recognizing it is the first step to either outgrowing it or turning it into a conscious practice.
Final thoughts
So, dear developer — are you also a kind of Monsieur Jourdain of vibe coding? Probably. And that’s okay.
What matters is turning that improvisation into intention. Vibe coding may get you started, but sustainable products need thoughtful, intentional code. The real magic happens when inspiration meets structure.