Definition
The far declarative end of the spectrum. You steer by feel, judge the result by running it and paste errors back until it works. The code itself is treated as disposable. Great for throwaway prototypes and exploration. Risky anywhere the code has to be maintained, secured or trusted.
Example prompt
Two turns. The second one only reacts to how it looks.
make a cool image carousel for the home page with our photos, make it feel aliveit's kind of janky, fix it and make it smoother
What it reveals
- Speed of exploration and willingness to try things
- Product intuition, when the result is judged critically
- In production work: a red flag if the person cannot explain the code
Use it when
- Throwaway prototypes, demos and spikes
- Exploring an unfamiliar idea or API quickly
- Personal tools where failure is cheap
Watch out for
- Code nobody understands ends up in the main branch
- Security problems (secrets, injection, auth) slip through unread
- Errors get "fixed" by piling more generated code on top
In an interview
Look for
- Does the candidate say they are prototyping, and switch styles when the stakes rise?
- Do they read the diff before accepting it?
Ask
- Walk me through the part that loads the images, line by line.
- What would you change before this goes to production?
Origin
Coined by Andrej Karpathy in a post on X in February 2025, describing a way of coding where you give in to the vibes and forget the code even exists. The term spread quickly across the industry.