What is vibe coding?
Vibe coding means building software by describing what you want in ordinary language and letting an AI write the code. You judge the result by whether it works and feels right, not by reading what it produced. The term was coined in early 2025 and stuck because it named something people were already doing.
What makes it different from earlier no-code tools is that there is no visual canvas and no set of blocks to arrange. You say what the thing should do, in the words you would use to a person, and the code that comes out is ordinary code rather than a hidden configuration inside somebody's platform.
The honest limitation is the same as with any instruction given in plain language: it is only as clear as you were. The people who get the most out of it are not the most technical ones, they are the ones who can say precisely what they want to happen and notice quickly when it does not.
Do you need to know how to code to vibe code?
No, and that is the point. What you do need is the ability to describe what you want clearly and to check whether the result actually does it. Tools differ in how much of the machinery they still expect you to understand afterwards.