# Vibe Engineering Vibe engineering is [[Simon Willison]]'s term for engineers at the top of their game using AI tools responsibly to accelerate their work. It's the disciplined counterpart to [[Vibe Coding]]: you use AI agents to generate code, but you review everything, test everything, and never commit code you couldn't explain to someone else. The distinction matters. Vibe coding accepts AI output without review. Vibe engineering uses AI as a force multiplier while retaining full comprehension and accountability. The output looks similar (AI wrote most of the code), but the process and the risks are fundamentally different. Vibe engineering is essentially what [[Agentic Engineering]] formalizes into patterns: [[Agentic TDD]] for verification, [[AI-assisted code comprehension]] for understanding, human-in-the-loop review before anything ships. The [[Unreviewed AI code anti-pattern]] is the line between vibe engineering and vibe coding. The shift from vibe coding to vibe engineering reflects the maturation of AI-assisted development. Early enthusiasm (let the AI do everything) gives way to disciplined practice (let the AI accelerate, but stay in control). [[Andrej Karpathy]] himself acknowledged this evolution, suggesting vibe coding is fading as "[[Agentic Engineering]]" becomes the next phase. The key test: could you explain every line to a colleague? If yes, you're vibe engineering. If not, you're accumulating [[Cognitive debt]]. ## References - https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/ ## Related - [[Vibe Coding]] - [[Agentic Engineering]] - [[Agentic TDD]] - [[AI-assisted code comprehension]] - [[Cognitive debt]] - [[Unreviewed AI code anti-pattern]] - [[Code is cheap, quality is not]] - [[Simon Willison]] - [[Andrej Karpathy]]