AI Discovery Lab Introduction to Artificial Intelligence — Session 12 of 12

Session 12: Vibe Coding — When "I Have an Idea" Becomes "I Built an App"

Describe what you want in plain English. AI builds it. Welcome to the era of software for everyone.

📖 Reading time: ~10 minutes
📚 Prerequisites: Session 6 — Prompt Engineering (you'll see why in a moment)
📄 Keywords: vibe coding explained, build apps without coding, AI app builders, Lovable, prompt-to-app

What If You Could Just… Describe It?

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine you want a simple app — say, a quiz for your students, a personal recipe organizer, or a website for your side business. In the old world, you had three options: (1) learn to code (months to years), (2) hire a developer (hundreds to thousands of dollars), or (3) give up and use a generic template that almost-but-not-quite does what you need.

Now there's a fourth option: describe what you want, and AI builds it for you. In minutes. For free.

This isn't a hypothetical. It's called vibe coding, it was named Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year in 2025, and it's the reason Apple's App Store saw an 84% spike in submissions in a single quarter. Even Linus Torvalds — the guy who created Linux — is doing it.

Let's talk about why this matters and how you can try it today.

Key Concepts

What Is Vibe Coding?

Vibe coding is the practice of building software by describing what you want in plain English and letting AI write all the code for you.

The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy (former head of AI at Tesla) in February 2025. He described it as a way of coding where "you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists."

In practical terms, it looks like this:

  1. You type (or say): "Build me a website for my flower shop with photos of my arrangements, prices, and a custom order form"
  2. AI generates the entire thing — layout, colors, code, functionality
  3. You see the result in seconds
  4. You say: "Make the header pink and add a testimonials section"
  5. AI updates it instantly

That's it. You never see a line of code. You never need to. You're the architect describing the building, and AI is the contractor handling the plumbing, electrical, and drywall.

Vibe coding is prompt engineering applied to building things, not just getting answers. In Session 6, you learned to talk to AI effectively. Vibe coding is what happens when you aim that skill at creation instead of conversation.

How Is This Different from Wix or Squarespace?

Good question. Website builders like Wix give you drag-and-drop blocks — you still have to make every layout decision, pick every widget, and connect things manually. It's like building with LEGO: creative, but you need to snap each piece together yourself.

Vibe coding goes further:

Traditional Website Builder (Wix, Squarespace) Vibe Coding (Lovable, Bolt)
Input Click, drag, configure menus and options Describe what you want in plain English
Decisions You make every design and layout choice AI makes design decisions (you override what you don't like)
Flexibility Limited to available templates and widgets Can build custom functionality you'd normally need a developer for
Learning curve Moderate (interface-specific) Minimal (just describe things clearly)
Speed Hours to days Minutes

Think of it this way: no-code tools give you a kitchen full of pre-made ingredients and recipes. Vibe coding gives you a personal chef — you just describe the meal you want.

The Prompt → Build → Iterate Loop

Vibe coding works in a loop that should feel very familiar after Session 6:

  1. Prompt — Describe what you want (the clearer, the better — all those prompting skills apply here)
  2. Build — AI generates the full working result
  3. Review — Look at what it made. Does it match your vision?
  4. Iterate — Describe what to change. "Add a dark mode toggle." "Move the navigation to the left." "Make it work on mobile."
  5. Repeat until you're happy

No step in that process requires you to understand code. Every step uses plain language. The same prompting principles from Session 6 — being specific, providing context, iterating instead of one-shotting — make you better at vibe coding.

What Can You Actually Build?

More than you might think:

What you probably shouldn't build with vibe coding (yet):

More on that in a moment.

The Tools — Your Vibe Coding Starter Kit

Here are the top free tools for trying vibe coding right now:

Tool What It Does Best For Free?
Lovable Full web apps from text descriptions, real-time visual builder Beautiful websites and web apps Yes (free tier)
Bolt.new Instant web apps from prompts, runs entirely in your browser Quick personal tools and prototypes Yes (free tier)
Replit Agent Plans, builds, and deploys full applications More ambitious projects (blogs, databases) Yes (free tier)
ChatGPT Generates interactive tools right in the conversation Simple calculators, quizzes, converters Yes
Lovable Mobile Vibe code from your phone using voice or text On-the-go ideas, voice-described apps Yes (free tier)

All of these work in your browser. None require installing anything. None require knowing what "JavaScript" or "CSS" means.

The Reality Check (Because We Promised to Be Honest)

Vibe coding is genuinely exciting. It's also genuinely imperfect. Here's the balanced view:

What Vibe Coding Is Great At

  • Personal projects — tools built just for you, where "good enough" is perfect
  • Prototypes — seeing if your idea works before investing serious time or money
  • Learning — understanding what's possible and what you'd want if you hired a developer
  • Speed — going from idea to working thing in minutes instead of weeks

What Vibe Coding Struggles With

  • Security — AI-generated code can have vulnerabilities. In 2025, researchers found that 170 apps built with one vibe coding tool were leaking personal user data.
  • Maintenance — Code you didn't write (and don't understand) is hard to fix when something breaks. This is called the "vibe coding hangover" — the morning after the magic, when something goes wrong and you're staring at code you've never seen before.
  • Complex apps — A simple website? Excellent. A full e-commerce platform with inventory management, payment processing, and shipping logistics? AI will get you started, but you'll hit walls.
  • Quality control — AI might add fake reviews, placeholder content, or broken features that look right but don't actually work.

The Apple Drama

Here's a story that captures both the excitement and the growing pains:

In early 2026, Apple noticed something: its App Store was being flooded with AI-built apps. An 84% surge in submissions, many of them from people using vibe coding tools on their phones. Apple's response? Start pulling vibe coding apps from the store — including an app literally called Anything, which let users describe and preview AI-built apps on their iPhones.

Anything got removed from the App Store. Twice. And rebuilt. Twice. It's the David-vs-Goliath story of the vibe coding era — and it's still playing out.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk offered $60 billion to buy Cursor (a vibe coding tool for developers), and 25% of Y Combinator startups now have codebases that are 95% AI-generated.

The takeaway? Vibe coding isn't a gimmick. It's a movement. But like every movement, it's still figuring out the rules.

Real-Life Examples

Try It Yourself 🧪

Activity: Build your first thing with AI (seriously — this takes 5 minutes)

  1. Go to Lovable (free account — just needs an email)
  2. In the prompt box, describe something simple you'd actually find useful. Here are some starter ideas:
    • "A personal reading list where I can add books, mark them as read, and rate them"
    • "A simple website for my [hobby/side project] with an about section, a gallery, and a contact form"
    • "A cooking unit converter that handles cups to grams, Fahrenheit to Celsius, and common substitutions"
  3. Hit enter and watch AI build it in real time — you'll see the page assembling itself before your eyes
  4. Once it's done, try iterating:
    • "Change the color scheme to something warmer"
    • "Add a dark mode toggle"
    • "Make the layout work better on mobile"
  5. Click "Publish" to put it on the internet (yes, for real — it gets a live URL)

What you learned: You just built something functional — a real, working thing on the real internet — using nothing but plain English descriptions. That's vibe coding. And the prompting skills you practiced in Session 6? They just became building skills.

Bonus: Try the same description in Bolt.new and compare the results. Different tools, different design choices — same idea.

Why This Matters 🌍

  • Vibe coding is the most tangible AI superpower for non-technical people. It turns "I wish I had an app that…" into "I built an app that…" — in minutes, not months.
  • "Software for one" is a new category. Before vibe coding, building personal software wasn't worth the effort. Now you can have tools tailored to exactly your life — your classroom, your family, your workflow.
  • It changes who gets to create. Word processors democratized writing (you no longer needed a printing press). Spreadsheets democratized analysis. Vibe coding democratizes software. The gatekeeping is dissolving.
  • The skills you've already learned in this course are the foundation. Prompt engineering (Session 6) makes you better at describing what you want. Understanding AI capabilities and limitations (Sessions 9 and 10) helps you know what's realistic. You're already equipped.
  • This is moving fast. Lovable just launched on mobile. Apple is cracking down. Elon Musk is offering $60 billion for developer tools. This isn't a "someday" technology — it's a "this week" technology.

Quick Recap 📝

  • Vibe coding = describing what you want in plain English and letting AI build it — no coding knowledge needed
  • It was coined by Andrej Karpathy in 2025 and named Collins Dictionary Word of the Year
  • Tools like Lovable, Bolt.new, Replit, and ChatGPT let you try it right now, for free
  • It's best for personal projects, prototypes, websites, and simple tools — less suited for complex or security-critical applications
  • Real limitations exist: security vulnerabilities, unmaintainable code, and the "vibe coding hangover"
  • This is prompt engineering applied to building — everything from Session 6 makes you better at it
  • The movement is reshaping who gets to create software — and it's happening right now

Fun Analogy 🎯

Vibe coding is like having a personal contractor for software. You're the homeowner describing your dream kitchen — "I want an island with a marble countertop, open shelving, and warm lighting." You don't need to know plumbing, electrical, or carpentry. The contractor (AI) handles all the technical work. You just walk through the finished space and say "actually, let's swap the brass fixtures for chrome." The project is yours. The vision is yours. You just didn't have to install the pipes yourself.

🎓 Course Wrap-Up

Congratulations — you've completed the full Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course!

Here's what you now understand:

  1. What AI is (and isn't) — Session 1
  2. How machines learn from data — Session 2
  3. How deep learning powers modern AI — Session 3
  4. How generative AI creates new content — Session 4
  5. How large language models work — Session 5
  6. How to prompt AI effectively — Session 6
  7. Which AI tools to use and when — Session 7
  8. How AI is transforming real industries — Session 8
  9. What risks to watch for — Session 9
  10. AI agents, copilots, and what's coming next — Session 10
  11. RAG and grounding AI in your documents — Session 11
  12. Vibe coding and building with AI — this session

Your next step: Try the Final Project — put everything together in a hands-on mini-project.

Thank you for reading! Go explore, experiment, and use AI wisely. The future isn't something that happens to you — it's something you shape. And now you have the knowledge to shape it well.