As someone who chats with startup founders, I have always admired “builders.” I have a lot of respect for their technical ability to dream up an idea and code it into reality, but it's not something I can't do.

Even the idea of ​​coding makes me feel pain in my college statistics course, where we learned the programming language "R" and we just say I didn't find it pleasant.

So when I came across the word "Vibe encoding" my immediate thought was "great, more technical brother term". But after falling down the rabbit's hole, I found something that really resonated with me.

The term was co-created by Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of Openai, who was released on X in February by Tesla’s former AI leader Andrej Karpathy, said: “The new code I call “Vibe encoding”, you completely succumb to the atmosphere, embrace the index, and forget that code even exists.”

"I just see things, say things, run things and copy paste, which is mostly effective," he wrote.

In short, Vibe encoding is coded with the help of artificial intelligence. Today, AI-powered code generation tools (such as Replit and Cursor) Even non-technical people and people without software engineering experience can create functional applications or websites.

Launching the founders aren't the only ones who use it - Big Tech also outsources some of its coding to AI. Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said 30% of the company's code is now written by artificial intelligence.

On a good April morning, I found a two-day "Vibe Coded" boot camp in my area that promoted class players to create functional applications in just 48 hours. That was my chance to get into the other side and see what the hype is all about.

The course, known as "With AI Code", was held in person on a weekend in an office classroom. We were just asked to bring our laptops and project ideas.

I showed up about half an hour in the morning on Saturday morning to get myself set up, which involves three simple steps:

1. Download and register the free version of the cursor
2. Download nodejs
3. Register for the free version of Vercel V0

The price of the newbie bootcamp is $300 (about $233), run by Sherry Jiang, co-founder and CEO of Fintech Company Peek, and Agrim Singh, co-founder and CTO of Niyam AI, hardware design assistant at AI-Power. Jiang and Singh both said their own startups were built primarily using the same AI tools and methods they taught in their class.

This is abridged version of the weekend.

The lessons on both days begin with a quick slide show we were working that day. On Saturday, we focused on narrowing down the project ideas to a well-defined product and then prototyped it. On Sunday, I was actually building our products and integrating AI into them.

I'm using Gemini 2.5 Pro (a large language model) to help clarify and narrow my project ideas for cleaning the documentation for product requirements. I decided to create a negotiation training tool. From there, I used V0 to prototype and developed the UI of the tool. I then use the cursor to build my product and integrate the AI ​​into it.

All of this may sound complex or unfamiliar, but in practice, the process is very feasible. Surprisingly, the hardest part for me was choosing an idea.

I bounced between different options, from instant paperwork translator to Tinder-for-dogs (to help dogs match Playdates). Ultimately, I settled on a web-based AI-driven negotiation trainer who helps users negotiate with different personalities in different environments and situations through written and oral exercises, which I successfully built before the weekend ended.

In hindsight, I realized that I should choose the second option: tinder-for-dogs.

I was surprised to find that the process didn't involve coding at all. I learned that Vibe encoding is more about patient and timely engineering than coding, or knowing how to prompt or guide AI tools.

Most of the class is about learning how to write our tips for AI tools. Singh said to about 30 lessons: “AI is the stupidest smart thing…you have to be very specific.

"I think in today's era, I think writing code will no longer be a huge differentiation. But if you're a very good software engineer, you'll be 10 times more productive," Jiang said. So, startups may not have to raise as much as they drop by hiring costs, she added.

"For people who are not technical today...I think AI is just the biggest unlock. So we will have more people who are able to build applications." Entrepreneurs who are frustrated by a lack of technical knowledge can at least get a boost from AI.

Jiang added that AI will be a great “equalizer” that will allow more people to create companies, especially if they have expertise in a specific field. For example, a teacher can create an application for students, while a diving instructor can create a global diving community application.

"I see that when they don't know how to code a few months ago, these people are discounting from $10,000 to $20,000 a month," said Jiangger.

While competition may also increase, as more people can create startups today, Jiang predicts that this will also be an opportunity to create niche applications targeting specific users’ over-focused.

But there is another question: do you need to know how to code to launch a reliable product to the market today? Jiang said: "It depends on your build."

It is important to confirm the limitations of atmosphere coding, best suited for very simple, lightweight, direct consumer applications – no technology requires "heavy business safety" or something like that.

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