The Addictive Flow of Vibe Coding with AI

Vibe coding with AI is a fun, fast, and captivating experience. This article explores why it feels so intensely rewarding and how it might fundamentally change our approach to creation.

In This Article

• Why vibe coding feels so addictive
• Just one more prompt
• Speed feels like power
• The other side of vibe coding
• Your brain can have a hard time keeping up
• Everything can start to sound the same
• Where this could lead
• Two directions
• The bottom line

I've always cherished the process of coding—the quiet immersion, the satisfaction of small victories, and the joy of seeing ideas materialize on screen. However, as Meilisearch expanded and I fully embraced my role as co-founder and CEO, those hands-on coding moments became increasingly rare. My days became consumed by calls, emails, and strategic meetings, pulling me further from the keyboard.

Then, I discovered "vibe coding." For the first time in years, I felt a renewed ability to build again—rapidly, playfully, almost effortlessly.

Essentially, vibe coding involves describing your desired outcome in natural language prompts, allowing an AI to generate the code for you. Instead of meticulously analyzing each line, you follow the flow, chasing the immediate result, the "vibe."

After nearly a year of practice, I can confidently say: vibe coding is addictive. It feels like pure magic, reigniting the fundamental joy of creation within me. It’s fast, exhilarating, and undeniably, sometimes mentally draining—but in the same way any deeply engaging creative process can be.

Let me elaborate on this experience.

Why Vibe Coding Feels So Addictive

Vibe coding possesses a compelling rhythm. The AI produces code at an astonishing speed, bringing your concepts to life almost instantly with minimal effort on your part. This kind of creative acceleration is unlike anything I've encountered before. Adapting to this pace is intoxicating.

Just One More Prompt

It often begins innocently: a single prompt to develop a new feature, followed by a few tweaks to test an idea. Before you know it, you're chasing "just one more prompt."

The AI responds instantly, unveiling possibilities you might not have conceived independently, sparking curiosity and a rush of adrenaline. It mirrors the addictive nature of gaming—just one more level, one more round, one more challenge.

Lydia Chilton, an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia Engineering, cited by Columbia AI, notes that innovation begins with the "flare" stage—the brainstorming of ideas and solutions. She highlights AI's capacity to amplify this stage, enabling us to explore more ideas, conduct more experiments, and design with unprecedented speed. For me, each new prompt delivers a mini-reward, a dopamine rush I find endlessly compelling.

Speed Feels Like Power

Traditional coding naturally incorporates pauses. Typing forces you to think, plan, and troubleshoot. With vibe coding, the AI handles the code generation; your role is to keep pace. Each result appears line by line, and your brain races to process, evaluate, and formulate the next prompt. It's creativity in its purest form—an exhilarating dialogue between human and machine.

I often find myself engaging in it throughout the day: with my morning coffee, during short breaks, or late at night when inspiration strikes. Each prompt fuels the next, and every result unlocks new possibilities. This speed is empowering because it seamlessly bridges the gap between thought and realization.

The Other Side of Vibe Coding

Like any potent tool, vibe coding demands balance. The intense rush can distort one's sense of time, leaving your mind feeling both satisfied and exhausted when the session concludes. You might wake up the following day mentally drained, replaying the ideas explored the night before. For me, this signifies deep engagement, a creative fatigue akin to that following a highly productive, all-night brainstorming session.

However, not everyone shares this perspective…

Your Brain Can Have a Hard Time Keeping Up

The primary challenge of vibe coding lies in maintaining cognitive engagement. You're constantly leaping between ideas, testing, prompting, and debugging, with a ceaseless stream of output.

Researchers at MIT have found that extensive reliance on AI for creative tasks can diminish deep focus and comprehension. This makes sense: once you shift from typing to prompting, your brain engages differently. Each instance of skipping the detailed reading and analysis of AI-generated code means forfeiting a bit of understanding. Over time, these missed moments accumulate, potentially disconnecting you from the system's inner workings.

As Andrej Karpathy, the computer scientist who coined "vibe coding," famously wrote on X: "The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while."

Nevertheless, vibe coding encourages a different mode of thinking. By remaining curious and actively reviewing the AI's output, you can transform speed into skill.

Everything Can Start to Sound the Same

The code may appear clean and structurally sound, yet it often feels eerily familiar. It reads like a snippet from a generic coding tutorial or a GitHub repository you've never seen but somehow recognize. This is a common trait of AI-generated code: it can simultaneously feel like everyone's work and no one's in particular. It embodies the shape of expertise but can lack true creativity until you infuse your own.

According to Columbia AI, Lydia Chilton describes AI as "reductive and fundamentally unoriginal" because it lacks the capacity to judge or refine its own creations. This is precisely where the human element becomes indispensable. Your unique quirks, choices, and deviations from convention are what imbue the output with your personal signature. When you integrate your perspective, vibe coding transcends generic outputs and becomes expressive and meaningful once more.

Where This Could Lead

Vibe coding illustrates the profound impact when creativity and automation converge. The traditional barrier between thought and execution dissolves. This represents a new form of craftsmanship, and it is truly extraordinary!

The long hours once dedicated to debugging, which fostered patience and precision, can now be channeled into design thinking, experimentation, or storytelling. Even if the nature of the work evolves, the creative spirit can endure.

Two Directions

We can already discern two emerging paths:

1. Some developers wholeheartedly embrace the rapid, freeform rhythm of pure vibe coding.
2. Others gravitate towards what Simon Willison terms "vibe engineering," where AI tools enhance their work without ever superseding their human judgment.

Both approaches are valid, provided you understand when to let the AI lead and when to intervene. Vibe coding can make you feel as though ideas are outstripping your comprehension, but that's part of its allure. The real skill lies in discerning which ideas are truly worth pursuing. You choose the significant problems, the features that add genuine value, and the solutions that resonate. Let AI manage the repetitive tasks while you concentrate on creativity, purpose, and strategic direction.

The Bottom Line

Vibe coding serves as a powerful reminder that AI tools can both accelerate work and reignite innate curiosity. Every morning when I open my laptop, I feel the same spark that first drew me to coding. I prompt, I explore, I build, and it's exhilarating. Yet, I still need to occasionally remind myself to slow down and stay grounded.

If AI transforms coding into a game, then the crucial skill now is learning to play it exceptionally well.

Have You Felt That Pull Too?

If you've found yourself chasing "just one more prompt" or losing track of time while coding with AI, I'd love to hear your experiences. How has vibe coding influenced your creative process?