Vibe Coding is Dying

Vibe coding is dying, and it is being replaced by something far more radical.

In February 2025, Andrej Karpathy coined the term ‘vibe coding’ to define the collaboration between a human and a chatbot to develop software. The term was named the Collins English Dictionary Word of the Year for 2025, but as we enter into 2026, I would argue that the term is inadequate to bear the weight of the next era of AI-assisted software development.

Both parts of the term are being proven redundant. The vibes are being replaced by expressed user needs. Whether a developer describing what they want using voice dictation software, or a system piping user feedback and behaviour directly into the development pipeline, this new era of software development is increasingly user-centred and intentional. The ‘coding’ is also at risk, to the extent that by coding we mean the manual human craft of writing code. Just last week it was reported that the best developers at Spotify “have not written a single line of code since December.”

Thus, the more accurate term to describe the era we are now entering into is ‘agentic engineering.’ Human beings are deploying AI-powered agents, not just to write code but to partner in engineering systems all the way up the stack, from the user-facing UI, to the database and even cloud hosting.

We are transitioning from vibe coding to agentic engineering. This shift has implications for everything from the software engineering profession to the role of software in both business and society. But, perhaps, the most poignant immediate takeaway is the fact that the vibe coding era has barely lasted a year. The pace of technological change is so rapid that even our terminology is struggling to keep up.