The very definition of "vibe coding" is using AI to write software and not even look at the code it produces.
There's this definition of LLM generation + "no thorough review or testing"
And there's the more normative one: just LLM generation.[1][2][3]
"Not even looking at it" is very difficult as part of a definition. What if you look at it once? Or just glance at it? Is it now no longer vibe coding? What if I read a diff every ten commits? Or look at the code when something breaks?
At which point is it no longer vibe coding according to this narrower definition?
[1] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/vibe-co...
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vibe%20coding
If you actually look at the code and understand it and you'd stand by it, then it's not vibecode. If you had an LLM shit it out in 20 minutes and you don't really know what going on, it's vibecode. Which, to me, is not derogatory. I have a bunch of stuff I've vibecoded and a bunch of stuff that I've actually read the code and fixed it, either by hand or with LLM assistance. And ofc, all the code that was written by me prior to ChatGPT's launch.
You say there's two cases: no review and full review, "deep sense of the code", and that one is vibe coding and one is not.
What about the degrees in between? At what point does vibe coding become something else?
For example, I would not say "looking at the diffs" to ever be enough review to get a deep sense of what's been done. You need to look at diagrams and systematically presented output to understand any complex system.
Is one person's vibe coding then another persons deep understanding non-vine coding?
If you can answer this question you may be able to convince me.
If you are trusting the AI's logic and primarily verifying the output (the app runs, the button works), you are vibe coding. If you are reading the diffs, verifying the architecture, you are transitioning back toward engineering. Any sincere developer knows where they are sitting on that spectrum.
Sure seems to me like it's subjective.
Also, I've nedlver ever heard so much talk about "verifying architecture" as when people talk about vibe coding.
That's not something you usually do. The architecture is the overall structure of a design, and has to be elaborated into functional designs and interface contracts before you have something you can verify in actual code. The architecture itself is very much an intangible thing. "Verifying architecture" in diffs is nonsense, and is definitely not engineering.
Level 5. You just spit stuff at the LLM and have it shit out code that you have zero clue what it's doing. You don't even know if you're using react or not!
Or maybe vibe slop vs. vibe-checked code.