Padraig McKee

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Less vibe, more intent

Vibe coding captured a moment in time. A reflection on what came next.

I've been experimenting with AI-assisted development for a while now. Recently, Balsamiq asked me to contribute a quote to their article on vibe coding, a term popularized by Andrej Karpathy.

This was my take:

"Vibe-coding coined and captured a transformative moment where we were all in awe of what prompts could one-shot. We leaned back and looked at it in full glory. Now I’m orchestrating multiple agents and there’s less vibe, more intent and intensity. Leaned in. The vibe that’s left is the one you need to take: a well-needed break after an intense session of context switching between agents. More needed than before."

What struck me while writing that quote is how quickly things have changed. When ChatGPT first appeared, a lot of the magic came from seeing what it could do with almost no effort. You'd type a prompt, sit back, and watch. It felt less like software and more like a glimpse of the future.

These days my experience is different. I'm not leaning back anymore. I'm leaning in. Instead of asking a single AI to generate something for me, I'm coordinating multiple tools, reviewing outputs, managing context, making decisions, and stitching pieces together. The work feels less passive and more active.

Ironically, as the tools have become more capable, they've demanded more intention from me, not less.

There's still plenty of magic in it. Just less vibe and more intent.

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