It’s Me, Hi. I’m the Vibe Coder.

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"There is no consumer desire to 'make apps,'" the post proclaimed. "Vibe coding," it went on, only appeals to those already motivated to code "the old way.” 

Here I was, spending my sacred weekend hours vibe coding an app with no coding background—yet according to this tech observer, the 1,000 people who liked his post on X, and everyone who’s ever derisively posted that people should “learn to code,” I didn't exist.

(Quick aside: “Vibe coding” is a term coined by OpenAI founding team member Andrej Karpathy to describe coding with AI-powered tools like Cursor that convert natural language instructions into working code. The idea is that you “fully give into the vibes… and forget the code even exists.”) 

It's flattering to imagine myself as this tech industry cryptid. But on a deeper level, the facile binary is irksome. Unfortunately it’s also fairly common in tech: technical versus non-technical. Builders versus users. "Real" developers versus everyone else. These false dichotomies scared me off from coding as much as the code itself; after all, it’s hard to feel invited into a clubhouse that has a “no liberal arts grads allowed” sign out front.

Even within tech’s walled garden, though, the binaries are beginning to blur. Venture capitalists now say they prefer “architect mindsets” and domain know-how over raw coding ability, crediting AI tools that let non-technical founders ship products.

And then there are people like me, who aren’t chasing entry into the engineer club or a seven-figure seed round. We're writers, designers, business owners, and domain experts motivated by specific problems we deeply understand, empowered by AI tools that finally speak our language.

Vibe coding hints at a future where software emerges from the inside out—from the people closest to the problems. As AI lowers the technical barrier, we may see more tools built by marketers, editors, researchers—anyone with deep context and a persistent itch to fix things.

Here’s one vibe coding cryptid’s perspective on what vibe coding looks like from the inside, who it's for, and why people who subscribe to the traditional division between builders and users are missing what makes this moment unique.

Who actually wants to build?

The discourse surrounding vibe coding tends to polarize into two extremes: Either vibe coding will revolutionize everything and "everyone will be a developer," or it's a brittle parlor trick—diverting at best and disastrous at worst.

Neither view is quite right. Vibe coding won't turn everyone into a full-stack engineer overnight, just as YouTube didn't turn everyone into a filmmaker. But neither is it just a toy for those who already write JavaScript in their sleep. 

Systematic problem-solving has never been the sole provenance of software engineers. You’ll see the same muscle at work when a chef designs mise-en-place for a dinner rush, a logistics lead choreographs warehouse pick-packs, or an editor tabulates a story budget for next week’s issue. There are loads of tasks that benefit from being broken down into clear, repeatable steps. AI tools just let more of us express that process through code, whether we write it ourselves or not.

I wish there was a way to show you just how aggressively untechnical I am. I tried learning once, via Codecademy, and promptly retreated when loops and functions began to blur together. I routinely get lost trying to find the “Share Screen” button on Zoom.

What I can recognize in my background is a tendency to, as one manager put it, “run toward problems.” At past jobs, that meant jury-rigging spreadsheets, recording internal how-to videos, or prompting early versions of ChatGPT to generate first-draft briefs. Even without technical tools, I was always trying to build my way out of friction.

I see premonitions of vibe coder Katie in these moments. But I don’t think I would have eventually found my way to "real" coding. That’s not what attracts me—and, I suspect, people like me—to vibe coding. What attracts us, I’d argue, are three things we have in common: 

1. We live the problems. First-hand domain experience lets us spot pain points early and frame solutions in real-world context.
2. We know what fails. Daily friction with existing tools hands us a ready-made list of what not to do. 
3. We default to action. When nothing fits, we start MacGuyvering solutions until something does.

What's new about vibe coding?

We've seen democratizing tools before. When blogging platforms simplified web publishing, millions who never saw themselves as writers began creating content. When smartphone cameras and Instagram made photography accessible, people who'd never dreamed of being photographers started composing and sharing images. The technology played this subtle psychological game, building confidence through small wins until people who never saw themselves as creative were routinely launching their work into the world.

Vibe coding tools share this persuasive quality. What makes the tools uniquely powerful is how they build confidence throughout the interaction with features like:

• Conversational interface: When you can express your idea in natural language, the computer becomes less an intimidating black box and more a collaborative partner.
• Rapid feedback loops: Traditional coding calls for thinking through ideas in their entirety before committing anything to code. Vibe coding lets you start with a rough idea and refine through dialogue. This iterative process feels more like sketching than engineering.
• Permission through demonstration: When AI successfully translates your words into working code, it validates your ideas, helping overcome impostor syndrome and the belief that building is "for other people."

New builders in the wild 

I know consumer-grade vibe coders exist, because my feeds are filled with them. Sure, some of that is an algorithmic self-fulfilling prophecy: I talk about vibe coding, so the platforms show me more of it. But the signal feels stronger than the echo. 

My first real hint came when I agreed to present as part of a virtual workshop on vibe coding for content marketers. Several hundred code-curious marketers showed up, and in the hours after the event, my LinkedIn exploded with connection requests and DMs from people eager to try building solutions for themselves.

One attendee, Dr. Claire Trévien, went on to build what she calls “the Tinder of first line inspiration for B2B marketers”—a swipeable tool to help jumpstart blog introductions that don’t sound like they were written by ChatGPT on autopilot. It’s delightfully specific and solves a problem that, to B2B marketers such as myself, is all too familiar, solved in a way that felt true to one practitioner’s experience of the problem. 

She’s not the only new builder in my feed. The operations lead at my former agency built an “AI Ops Lab” to track various experiments in operations she was running across the business. My friend Anna Burgess Yang vibe coded a meal planning app for her family. On the subreddit r/boardgames, where I am a regular, user rusty4481 built an app that will recommend new board games based on your collection in the online database BoardGameGeek. 

It’s easy to dismiss these as edge cases, but I see them as early signals—prototypes of what the future of building might look like. Vibe coding feels similar to a workplace innovation like Excel, which gave non-programmers a way to  automate insight and express their expertise in a scalable way. Not everyone will become a software developer, but more people than ever will become fluent in systems, empowered to design workflows, shape tools, and solve problems from the inside out. 

The circle is bigger than you think

If you're thinking about getting into vibe coding, here's my advice: Give yourself permission to play. You don't need to become a "real developer" or aspire to build the next unicorn startup. The joy lies in experimenting, tinkering, and solving your own problems.

Start by signing up for a free account on Lovable or Cursor and typing a single prompt. One sentence, like, “Create a website that matches lonely houseplants with new owners,” is all it takes. That’s how I got started, with a website—and now I'm building tools I use every day. My thought leadership brief builder, for example, helps me get on the same page with clients about our work together.

If you’re a leader, look around: Your next great builder might be your content strategist, operations lead, or researcher. They know the problems best, and with the right tools, they can start solving them. Support their curiosity. Create space to experiment. The best investment you can make is a culture that gives them permission to build.

As I write this, I'm running the editorial workflow app I’ve been making in the background, spinning up content pitches I can send to the members of Every Studio to get their creative juices flowing. Six months ago, all that existed in this tool's place was frustration and a vague feeling that things could be better. Today there's a tool I built myself, because AI finally offered me a language of creation that spoke to my strengths. The distance between those versions of myself came down to one prompt. If you’ve ever seen a better way of working and wished that you could make it real, that same shift is waiting for you, too.

Katie Parrott is a writer, editor, and content marketer focused on the intersection of technology, work, and culture. You can read more of her work in her newsletter. 

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