Ep. 26: What is Vibe Coding?

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:05] Welcome to ChatGPT Curious, a podcast for people who are, well, curious about ChatGPT. I'm, um, your host, Dr. Shantae Cofield, also known as the Maestro, and I created this show to explore what ChatGPT actually is really, though, are the files in the computer, how to use it, and what it might mean for how we think, work, create, and move through life. Whether you're skeptical, intrigued, or already experimenting, you're in the right place. All that I ask is that you stay curious. All right, let's get into it. [00:00:38] Hello. Uh, hello, hello, my curious people, and welcome to episode 26 of Chat GPT Curious. I'm your grateful host, the Maestro, and today we are answering the question, what is vibe coding? Now, this topic is not, like, directly ChatGPT related, but you can absolutely use Chat GPT to help you Vibe code. Um, but you know more than that. We zoom out. Sorry, that's. That's moving the. The arm on the microphone there. If we zoom out. My goal with this podcast is to help all of you stay in the know about all things AI. My largely like LLM, AI related. [00:01:15] And vibe coding is very much at the top of that list. So we talking about it today. I actually shared a, um, thread about it, however long ago, and one of my homies was like, what is vibe coding? And I was like, I should probably do an episode. I just want you folks to be in the know. You don't have to do it. You don't have to love it. I just want you to know what these things are. So, vibe coding, what is it and why should you care about it? [00:01:42] Let's answer that in reverse. And why should you care about it? You. You don't need to care about it. You don't care about anything. Like I said earlier, I am sharing this to keep you in the know in case you're a curious person like me. Uh, and you're just curious about what's going on. Maybe you've heard the term, maybe you haven't, but you're just curious. And so I. I want to share this. If you're not curious about it, zero judgment, and you're probably not even listening to this episode. So vibe coding, let's get some definitions, and then I'll walk you through some stuff and share my opinions on it. So vibe coding is a term that was introduced by Andre Carpathy. I don't know how to say his name. I don't know if it's Carpathy. Carpathy. Uh, but it was introduced by our guy, Andre in February 2025. So, like, not that long ago, right? A year ago. [00:02:29] Uh, he. Andre for. For what it's worth, he is a big name in the AI world. He's a founding member at OpenAI. He did leave. He left in 2024. Um, he led autopilot AI at Tesla. He's a super smart dude, making things digestible, speaking to the people. Like, he's very, very knowledgeable. [00:02:47] Um, very big name in the AI world. [00:02:49] But the quote, um, this was shared on Twitter in, In February. He shared it on Twitter in February of 2025. Uh, and this is where this term came from. So I'm gonna read the quotes a little bit long, but bear with me. So the, the tweet. The tweet reads. There's a new kind of coding I call vibe coding in quotation marks, where you fully give in to the vibes and embrace exponentials and forget that the code even exists. [00:03:14] It's possible because the LLMs, for example, cursor, composer with Sonnet, are getting too good. Also, I just talked to composer with Super Whisperer. Super Whisper, so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things, like decrease the padding on the side by half because I'm too lazy to find it. I accept all, always. I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages, I just copy them in with no comment. [00:03:40] Usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension. I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug, so I just work around it or ask for some random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or a web app, but it's not really coding. I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy, paste stuff, and it mostly works. [00:04:11] That's pretty dope, yo. So translation there. Using LLMs to build things like apps or projects or software, without reviewing any of the code that it writes, right? You literally just type. Or in his case, speak. I use. I use whisper flow, so I can speak as well. Uh, you type or you speak natural language into the LLM and you tell it what, what you want, and it does all the work. It makes the thing. Right? [00:04:34] As I'm saying this, you might be like, this sounds to be too good to be true. [00:04:39] And it kind of is, right? But it kind of isn't, which is, uh, a large part why I'm doing this episode. Right? I want to make you aware of it, what is actually going on. So there are Vibe coding tools that are marketed to the public, most notable being, like, there's one called lovable and one called replit, or replete. I don't know how you pronounce it. It's R, E, P, L, I, T. I think it's called replit, uh, pronounced replit. But you just describe the app and it builds everything. My guess again, as I'm saying that you're like, yeah, right. I know you folks, right? You are a very educated, common sense, grounded down to earth, realistic audience. And so as I'm saying that you're like, yeah, right. And that's the correct response in my opinion. Right? Yes. These AI agents, they can execute, uh, and it can make a working app, but what it creates is as fragile as you'd expect, right? [00:05:31] M. You have no idea how it works, the thing that it's creating, so you can't fix it if it breaks. And the biggest issue and one of the things that you see a lot of the, um, critics of vibe coding talk about is the security. Right? But let's stop for a moment before I go down the, like, critic route here and appreciate the fact that you can actually use these things to get a working prototype just by typing in natural language. I mean, like, I want an app that does XYZ looks like this, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's pretty dope, but pump the brakes. It is a lot like the early phases of image generation with LLMs, right? You all remember, remember the hands. The hands are still fucked up a lot of the time, right? You're not, you know, in control at all of what it makes. You just kind of like, type it in and you hold, you know, cross your fingers and hold your breath and you're like, let's see what. What it comes up with. [00:06:26] That's what it's like when you use these, these Vibe coding, um. You know, apps use these Vibe coding tools. And just like with image generation, what it gives, you might not be right. It might be close, but it might be completely wrong. Might be terrible. And, you know, when you try to change one thing, something else messes up and you're just like, fuck, I just want this fucking thing. It's so simple. [00:06:47] Imagine that. But for a web app, you see, this could be very, very problematic. [00:06:54] But the reason I started off with the definition, as originally coined by Andre, is because we're starting to see Vibe coding conflated with AI assisted coding, and that's wrong. [00:07:04] Vibe coding is exactly what he said, it's going off of Vibes. You don't care about the code or how it works, just that it works and works. Uh, good enough, right? Which is great for prototyping, it's great for getting things shipped quickly. So I find this really interesting, really cool, because I can put my marketer hat on. And it is really changing the landscape for any of the folks who used to pitch ideas for things like this via drawings or schematics or like, you know, whatever renderings. Now you can Vibe code a working app, you know, quote unquote, working web app that your investors or fucking whoever can actually use and try. Like, that's really, really, really cool, right? It kind of the equivalent of like you can 3D print things and then like you're trying to make something be like, here's like just one, like, model of this. And they can see it and touch it and feel it. Like, that's, that's pretty cool. [00:07:50] If we, if we move away from that or just flip that a little bit and we go into AI assisted coding, right? [00:07:58] This is when you have AI generate the code, but you're still checking it and you understand the logic and you know what's going on under the hood. [00:08:08] I believe that Vibe coding and AI assisted coding, they exist on a spectrum. I am currently living in the middle and it's fucking awesome. All right. And this is also a big reason for this episode. I know this is a very niche episode and I'm okay with that. Right. I'm going to keep doing episodes, another one next week. Um, but for the person that this resonates with, I am, I'm glad. Like, I'm very excited about this. I am living in the middle of this spectrum. You know, one end is Vibe coding, one I. One end is AI assisted coding. And I want to start introducing you to curious folks to this world. I don't know how to code. I have no desire to memorize coding rules or like learn code. But I love problem solving. I love understanding logic, I love figuring things out. I love learning how things work together. I spend many hours now, even before I did this episode, I was doing some, we'll say, some research to, to. To be able to write this episode out. And I spun down a huge ass rabbit hole of understanding how, uh, how JavaScript plays in with things and server side rendering versus browser rendering and just these things that, that may not interest you, but for the one person that's listening, I feel like that movie, what is the movie with Owen Wilson and he's like talking about the pods and like, this is. It's gonna land with one person. And I'm like, this will land with one person. And if that's you, you're my people. You're my extra. Extra. My people. Hit me up. [00:09:28] Um, but I want to introduce you folks to this world for the person that it may res. Resonate with. Right. AI is giving rise to a whole new skill set and introducing coding to a whole new demographic. And you folks know, one of the things that has had me so excited about AI from the beginning are all the things that I think that it can democratize. Right. We can now add coding and web development to that list. [00:09:54] That's amazing to me. Is this going to radically shift everything and move the needle? I don't know. I don't really, like, feel like predicting is. Is worthwhile, but I think it's really fucking cool. Right? [00:10:03] The main thing that I want you to take away from this episode is that while Vibe coding exists, if you are curious and you are looking to dabble, I want you to lean into AI Assisted coding. Yes. Use natural language to have the LLM generate the code for you. But ask what the fuck the code means. [00:10:22] Ask it why it's doing what it's doing. Tell it that you're not a coder and you want to learn what's going on, AKA have IT teach you. [00:10:29] I find this just fascinating. I think last week's episode was all about Google Notebook. Like, this is how I think where I love seeing AI used to learn things to teach you. I spent hours today just going back and forth with ChatGPT and again, I use whisper flow, so I can just use my voice and just talk. [00:10:49] Going back and forth with it and being like, so what I think this means is this. And then it gives me something back and be like, kind of, but not really. And it explains it. And I can be like, okay, so what. What does that mean? Okay, so what I'm, uh, hearing and understanding is this just going back and forth and back and forth. And it just lets you. Right. It doesn't stop you. This is incredible to me as it relates to learning things and understanding things and acquiring knowledge. Just absolutely phenomenal. Right? So back to the topic, Vibe coding. Besides being curious, why else might you care about Vibe coding? [00:11:19] Because maybe, maybe, as I was just saying, all it's about learning. Maybe you got a little bit excited and you realize that maybe you can create custom solutions to some of your own problems. Right? Last episode, I think it was last episode. I don't know. Was it? Well, in a previous episode, I mentioned that I built a, um, a med tracker, a pill tracker for my sister that I actually use. [00:11:40] If I ever take, like, any kind of motor or anything, I'm like, maybe I should see how many I'm taking. Um, but I mentioned that I built that and I also built a website for my, my brother, but the pill tracker. Does this already exist? Likely, but now it's exactly what I want. Maybe you personally want a time tracker. Maybe you want some sort of custom dashboard for your training clients. I don't know. But you can make these things. [00:12:04] It will not be simple. Like, yes, you can go to Repli, you can go to Lovable. It's just like, just type it in. It's not that simple. You know, this, that it's going to break. It's not going to work the way that you want. It will not be simple. Lots of tech tenacity will be required. And again, I'm going to advise against you using the publicly marketed, you know, vibe coding platforms like Lovable. But it is possible to build these things. And this is what I'm diving into 2026, right? So I'm gonna give a little mid episode CTA call to action. If you have an idea for something and you want me to try building it, hit me up, right? I'm looking for ideas. I'm looking for things that I can build, because that's the best way to learn, is actually to try to build something. It doesn't work. You figure out why it's not working, ask more questions, like, that's how you learn this stuff. It's like the reverse learning style. [00:12:48] Um, and I need use cases. So hit me up, text me 310-737-2345. [00:12:54] Send me a DM at the movement. Maestro, I need use cases. Let's chat. But for those of you that are maybe like, oh, this is interesting. What did you use? How'd you do this, Maestro? [00:13:04] To make the app, uh, for my sister, the web app for my sister, uh, and the website for my brother, I used Cursor, which is an AI assisted code editor, uh, code editor that kind of had marbles in my mouth there. Um, and I'm still using Chat GPT a lot as well, because I'm already paying for it, so I haven't jumped into codex. Um, But I use ChatGPT a lot to like, ask, like, what is this code? What should it be? Or like, what, what's. If I want to plan things out, um, I use ChatGPT as well. [00:13:29] Claude Code is a big player in the game right now, possibly the biggest. But I don't use it. I'm still working through Cursor, um, and diving into Claude code is on the to do list. So you know, I wanted to give you these things instead of just being a complainer of like, don't use this, don't use this. And you're like what the fuck do I use? So I'm using cursor, I'm using ChatGPT. Claude code is a big, big, big player. Um, and I'm keeping this list very superficial. If you want to nerd out and like really go into the tech and like understand what I did, hit me up. [00:13:56] If you're looking to learn this, what would I recommend? I took two courses. [00:14:01] So the first one is build your own apps. Um, it's a self paced course, it's by a guy named Nat Eliason. I want to say, um, part of me, I will link these in the, the show notes as well. But um, part of me thinks that at some point I will make my own course because his course was. [00:14:17] Do think that he left some stuff out and that I, you folks know I'm a teacher through and through. Uh, so I could see myself definitely at some point making a course, making a program, something like that. Um, but that was one that I, that I use and I, I found very helpful and I paired it with my friend K. He, I, I'm pretty sure I've spoken about him before. Um, um, he has a course, it's now a membership. Um, but the course is inside of the membership. I will link that. It's called the AI accelerator. Full disclosure, I get case course for free. [00:14:45] Like he's a good friend of mine, he lives Manhattan beach, not too far from me. Lives pretty close to Jill actually. [00:14:50] Um, for those of you who don't know because you're have, you're new to my world, Jill is my best friend. Uh, we do a lot together in the online business space and so Jill, Jill fit. Um, but his course, uh, his membership, the AI accelerator, it has a large financial focus because his background is finance. Um, but it's still applicable, like you can still learn the things and he's a true tinkerer. He is like me, but a man, but like not a brochacho. Um, so I, I kind of paired the two together and I've learned a ton. And again, yes, if you're waiting and you're one of my, my super fans, my diehards, my OGs love you folks, and if you're like, but I want to take it from you, I, I will likely make something at some point, but it will not be for a bit. I'm still very much in the learning phase, and I do not believe that of like, you just have to be like, one step ahead. I'm like, uh, no, you got to be alred steps ahead. [00:15:40] Uh, so as I'm getting, once I get there, I'll put something out. Um, but I want to wrap up this Vibe coding discussion with my general thoughts about Vibe coding, right? Which is that I think it's fucking awesome. I think Vibe coding and AI assisted coding, I think they are both awesome. To me, lowering the barrier to entry on coding and web development, it is really, really exciting. All right, Again, I am not here to forecast what it means for jobs or anything like that. I think that it's a bit of a waste of time. Like, humans adapt, things change. And the only thing is 2020 is hindsight. I think people like to spend time and like, be like, I was right, See. But, uh, I, I have no interest in that. [00:16:18] All right, what, uh, what I do want to talk about and what I do want to address real quickly is the main issue that I see come up, namely in the thread space when people are discussing Vibe coding and AI assisted coding, and that is security, right? [00:16:33] Data breaches and exposure of sensitive information is a real thing. [00:16:37] If you are vibe coding something, right, you're just like, hey, I'm all vibes. Let's put this thing in. I don't care. It works. And you're trying to sell that thing to the masses. [00:16:46] One, don't do that. Don't do that. Number two, security is a very real concern, and you're probably gonna it up, right? So don't do that. If flip side of this, you are building something for yourself, or think about building something for yourself, it's far less of a concern. Especially if you're using AI assisted coding and you're asking questions as you go, and you're building slowly and you are thinking about the logic and you're asking, you have a plan going in, right? M. It's, it's very, uh, I, I, I don't want to say you don't have to worry about security, but I, I should probably say that you will address these things as you go because you're going slowly and you have a plan and you're asking, you know, you're asking AI about this. [00:17:27] I actually, speaking of asking AI, I actually had a chat with chat. [00:17:30] Uh, when I was doing this earlier today, um, when I was like researching this episode, put this episode together, because I just some part of me feels some kind of way when I see the critics talking about coding and web development and security and it just doesn't sit right with me. Like, I think this is such an awesome technology and it very much feels like there's gatekeeping going on. And it's like, because people are learning this in a different way and maybe faster, a little bit easier. [00:18:00] The folks who had to learn it the other way are just like, it'll never work and it's stupid and you don't know it and you can't be in our club. And it's like very weird to me because I think the people that really do know code and coding are just at such an advantage. Like this is going to be like super power, like extra super duper power for them. Like, oh my God. But what I see, of course, you know, I'm gonna be seeing things on threads that are, you know, inflammatory or argumentative because that's what the algorithm pushes. I try to interact with it, but you see it, um, as opposed to like seeing people cheering that, that is in there somewhat. Um, but the, the criticism I'm seeing and the discussion of security, it doesn't land right because it feels incomplete. It feels like they, the critics of AI assisted coding are presupposing that folks who are, you know, vibe coding or AI assisting coding, these, that they're, you know, making these huge apps that are public facing and contain a lot of sensitive data. And I'm like, okay, but that's not everybody. And to me, that analogy, and this is how I, I like to the like in a metaphor, I should say, I like to liken things that I understand. And I'm like, this is why it doesn't sit right, the metaphor, the analogy that sits with me, that lands with me rather is vibe coding or AI assisted coding. Like that, where it's like, I'm gonna make a huge. These people are gonna make a huge app and it's gonna be public facing and at scale and it's going to have all sensitive data. [00:19:20] That would be like a random person with no PT background, no physical therapy background, being in charge of a clinic, opening a clinic that specializes in post op ACL rehab and then they have the patients come in on day one, they're doing plyometrics and sprinting. Right? That's not what people are talking about. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about doing and encouraging curious folks like perhaps you to try would be analogous to having someone with no PT background, but who is resourceful and has common sense look to do their own post op ACL rehab with, you know, they can reference textbooks and they're going super slowly with all the interventions at each step. They're asking why, they're asking about precautions. They've laid out a whole game plan before they even started. And they laid it out with someone who's an expert at this. Right? Uh, I know that as I'm saying this, there might be some movement pros listening and maybe you feel some kind of way and you're like, wait, someone doing their own ACL rehab? Yes, you can do your own ACL rehab. Like, we are not that special as PTs. We are not. Most of the time what we're doing with people is telling them not to do. And it's like, so don't do that. Chill the out, all right? We're holding them back in a good way, putting some reins on it. [00:20:37] I firmly believe that a resourceful individual can absolutely do their own rehab. The human body is really smart, right? It's. [00:20:44] It wants to heal, right? I've seen it firsthand. I've seen someone not, yes, I've seen the human body heal, but I have seen someone do their own rehab on her own, and she's back to playing volleyball and do all the things. And I'm like, all right. Like, when she first said it, I was like, hey, where are you gonna. This is quite a few years ago, um, with a friend of mine that I know from CrossFit. And she's already cl. Playing, I don't know, doing something. And I was like, where are you gonna do rehab? And she's like, I'm just gonna do it myself. And I was like, what? Actually, I know a guy as well, Vinnie, who did it. And I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean you're doing yourself? And then I was like, actually, I guess this makes sense. She has familiarity, like, with movement and, and has, you know, she's resourceful and she's just fine, right? [00:21:25] This is what I believe, Believe, uh, you know, AI assisted coding to be like, the computer is very smart. AI LLMs. They're. They're. I don't want to say smart and like, personify them, but like, they're trained on this, right? And so if you go slowly and you ask questions and the use case is just for yourself, I see no issue. I think I see Excitement, like that is what I see is excitement. And you can make these things that are fully functional and they work for you, just for you. You know, you could make it for a group of people as well. I'm just saying this is the issue that folks have is like, trying to do things at scale, and that's when they really talk about it. And it's like, well, yeah, doing anything at scale, when you're selling it to a bunch of people, having a bunch of people use it, like there's a lot more issues, a lot more surface area for things to go wrong, of course. [00:22:12] But, uh, I say this because just in case anyone is, is thinking about it. You know, the one person that's listening to this, that's thinking about doing it, I don't want you to talk yourself out of it because of these critics. Right? We know that AI is only going to continue to get better. And I'm really fucking excited to see what that means for Vibe coding and AI assisted coding and, you know, for curious. Com. Curious computer users like you and me. All right, all right, let's get into how I use ChatGPT this week and then I will let you go. Just a little forewarning. It's a little bit technical, but, uh, I think you can handle it. So those of you that don't know each episode, I include a section where I briefly discuss how I use ChatGPT that week. [00:22:55] This week I spent the better part of. I'll uh, say last week, the better part of Friday, last Friday, creating featured images for each of the blog posts on my ChatGPT curious website. If you haven't checked it out, I will link it. Go look at them because I worked hard. So if you haven't checked out the website, check it out. I had worked, worked hard on it, but I will link you directly to the, uh, the blog page where you can see all those featured images. So I wanted it to be meta. So I had ChatGPT create the images. I also have no idea how else I would create them. Like, I'm not gonna fucking go on canva to do it. Um, so had ChatGPT use it. My goal was to have it, um, my goal in these, these images was like to capture the vibe of the blog post. [00:23:34] And just so we know the blog post is the. It's the companion, right? The companion, Curious Companion is the newsletter written version of these podcast episodes. So I was like, I'm gonna have it. Just I wanted to capture the vibe of it and put it into a picture. [00:23:46] But Also because I was going to be, uh, having to repeat this process like this is. I, I don't. I decided to change the look of the blog and add these images. So that meant I have like 25 of them to do when I was like, I should create a re, you know, rinse and repeat process for this. So I wanted to create a prompt that I could just feed into ChatGPT with the companion and then it would, you know, generate the image. Long story short, what I learned here is that to get the best output, AKA to get the best image generated like this is correct. I don't have to fucking ask for a million, like, try to change it. Uh, and so, you know, having it be exactly what I wanted. The best protocol was to have a prompt that instructed chat to generate the text that it would then use to generate the image, not the image itself. We know it's much faster to generate text. It's much easier to correct and have it revise text and change text than to wait for it to like regenerate an image. And also once it gets that first image, you, you folks know, it's like, stuck with that same kind of like, template. [00:24:44] So of note, of course I created my, you know, I did one of my shortcut prompt things where the directions are saved in the project advice and saved in the project instructions. And all I have to type is promptify this, right? So I gave it, uh, a go word in this case, which was prompt to find this. I have one that says can vasify this. I have one that is companion this. And when I type companion this and I put the, uh, outline for the episode, it turns it into the. Generates the companion for me, the newsletter for me. Because the instructions that correspond to companion this are in the instructions for the project. So I made that for. I had to do quite a bit of back and forth. Uh, but I made that for the image. And so I, the shortcut word that I use is promptify this, because I want it to give me the prompt that it's going to use to generate the image. Uh, and so that's what's in the instructions. And so I feed it the companion, uh, and I say promptify this and it generates the text for what the image is going to be. And then it asks me approve or revise. If I say approve, then it will generate the image. If I say revise and uh, then I tell it how I want it to revise it, it'll revise the prompt, spit it out to me again, and we can continue with that process. [00:26:02] So the images in general, for any of you that are generating images, they're way better than they used to be, and I'm really happy with them as, like, the thumbnail featured images. [00:26:13] Um, of note, it can create. Chat can create really, like, super realistic images. [00:26:19] Uh, so I had to set parameters in the. In the instructions that I was like, I don't want that. Like, I wanted it to be, like, more cartoonish. Um, but that is how I use ChatGPT. [00:26:28] I know it's a little technical there, but I think you folks can handle it. So we'll wrap it up with that. Hopefully you found this episode helpful. Maybe you're curious about vibe coding or just, you know, curious about being in the know about things. That is ultimately, my goal is to create informed consumers, so hopefully you found it helpful. If you did consider leaving a rating or a review. I think we're at 22, maybe 23. I should have checked before I didn't, but either way, let's get to the more because why not? Let's give me to that. Let's get 25. Can we get to 25? Let's do it. And if you go there and you see this at 25, then let's get to 26. I pretend that I have a higher number. Let's get to 100. Okay, don't forget, folks, I have that companion newsletter, the Curious Companion. It drops every Thursday, and it's basically the podcast episode in text format. So if you prefer to read or you just want a written record of the goods, join the newsletter fam. You can head to chatgpt curious.com forward/newsletter. Or you can check out the link in the show notes. As always, my friends, endlessly, endlessly. One more time. Endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Until we chat again next Thursday, stay curious.