"Vibe Coding" vs. AI-Enabled Development

“Vibe coding” is the only term being thrown around about leveraging AI to build software, but the conversation around “vibe coding” misses a much bigger distinction.

“Vibe coding” brings to mind a hybrid nostalgic/futuristic image of a tech-bro wannabe solopreneur building flimsy prototypes on Replit in his mom’s garage. “AI-enabled development” is the term I’ve been using for something else entirely: deliberate, collaborative, standards-driven work that makes engineering discipline and compliance stronger, not weaker.

A lot of people talk about the risk of AI letting non-engineers build software, but that’s not really the risk.

Generally speaking, the best designers have never been traditional software engineers. AI is giving those designers expanded access to build more solutions, faster. The real risk is that AI gives people a faster way to keep bypassing the critical thinking required to build truly valuable solutions.

And hasn’t that always been the real risk? Humans build bad software, too. They just build it slower.    

Here’s an example: a company hands a vague idea to an offshore development team with a tight budget. The team takes the requirements literally, moves fast, and pushes the build into production. The result is a brittle system with a nonsensical UI. The next five years are spent patching, extending, and defending a faulty foundation.

“Vibe coding” is just a faster version of that same mistake — prompt in, code out, illusion of progress.

But there’s another category of development emerging under the surface. While people are being loud on the Internet about vibe coding and AI taking over all the jobs, the doers aren’t saying much. They’re just doing. Because that’s what they do best.

The architects, PMs, product owners, and power users out there in the workforce are leveraging AI to build solid solutions that modern businesses will actually adopt.

These are the people who have spent years sitting between users and developers. The ones who design workflows, test edge cases, train teams, and prioritize what actually matters. They understand where systems break, how data behaves in the real world, and what users actually do — not what the spec says they do.

These people have always been designing the system. They just couldn’t build it.

AI is putting development capability in the hands of the people who are closest to the business, closest to the users, and closest to the actual problem the software is supposed to solve.

That will change how teams work. 

AI-enabled development will force functional and technical experts to collaborate differently and adhere even more closely to engineering standards and compliance requirements — as long as AI is enabling the right mix of expert humans to do the work.

AI-enabled development is not a replacement for architecture, iteration, or critical thinking. It is a force multiplier for them. Used well, it requires intentional architecture, iterative thinking, and a clear understanding of how the system is supposed to behave. The tool is faster, but the thinking still has to be there — maybe more than ever.

So no, “vibe coding” isn’t dangerous simply because non-technical people are building things. It’s dangerous because it’s accelerating the development of faulty products that lack design, security and useful application. 

But in the hands of those who truly understand systems, users, compliance, and data, AI-enabled development might finally put software design in the hands of the people who were doing it all along.