What is Vibe Coding?

If you’ve been browsing videos or tech forums lately, you might have come across a hot topic—“Vibe Coding.”

Don’t be intimidated by this trendy name; Vibe Coding simply means: writing code based on your feelings. It may sound a bit mystical, so let me illustrate.

Traditional programming is like learning to cook—you need to first buy a recipe (watch tutorials), memorize the measurements of each ingredient (learn syntax), practice your chopping skills (master the basics), and after months of effort, you might still not be able to cook a decent scrambled egg.

In contrast, Vibe Coding is like walking into a smart kitchen and telling an AI, “I want a sweet and sour home-cooked dish with a nice color combination of red and yellow.” The AI immediately serves you a delicious plate of scrambled eggs, and you’ve learned how to adjust the flavor for next time.

In essence, Vibe Coding is about describing the functionality you want in natural language and letting AI generate the code, while you understand programming logic through running and debugging. You don’t need to start from “Hello World” and struggle with syntax; instead, you start from solving real problems and learn as you go.

How Can Vibe Coding Help Our Lives and Work?

You might be wondering: I’m not a programmer; what’s the use of this?

That’s the most fascinating aspect of Vibe Coding—it’s not just for programmers; it’s a “superpower” that anyone can master.

1. Doubling Work Efficiency

Imagine these scenarios:

• You work in administration, and every day you need to summarize data from dozens of Excel sheets. Manually copying and pasting takes an entire day. With Vibe Coding, you tell AI, “Help me merge the third column of these 50 sheets into a new sheet, sorted by date.” Three minutes later, the script runs, and you leave on time to watch your show.

• You’re in e-commerce and need to monitor competitor price changes daily. Previously, you had to click through each webpage to record prices; now, you can write a small crawler to automatically fetch data and generate reports, even setting up alerts for price anomalies.

• As a content creator, you want to batch process hundreds of images for watermarks and sizes. You don’t need to learn Photoshop; a single code can handle it all, saving time for brainstorming your next viral topic.

2. New Pathways for Side Income

The trend of “slash youth” was popular in recent years, but most side jobs either require physical effort (like delivery or ride-sharing) or resources (like selling goods or training). Vibe Coding offers ordinary people a new creative path.

Some have used AI-generated code to create small programs for group buying groceries in their community, earning a stable but modest income; others have written automatic ticket-buying scripts to provide services on resale platforms; and some have automated repetitive workflows at work, turning them into templates to sell to peers.

These are not mere fantasies but real cases. The key lies not in how strong your technical background is, but in your ability to identify needs and quickly implement them using Vibe Coding.

3. Upgrading Your Thinking

The deepest value of Vibe Coding lies here.

Once you get used to the process of “describing problems → AI generating solutions → testing and validating → iterating and optimizing,” your way of thinking will subtly change. You’ll become better at breaking down complex problems, more adept at spotting patterns, and bolder in trying new tools.

This “computational thinking” applies not only to programming but also to writing, planning, and even dating. After all, it’s fundamentally about clarifying needs and finding optimal solutions.

Many Want to Start but Are Held Back by Various Reasons

At this point, you might feel a bit intrigued. But wait, I can guess you’re already having doubts:

“I’m not good at math; my logical thinking is poor. Can I learn this?”

“I’m too busy with work; when will I have time to study systematically?”

“Is my computer powerful enough? Should I enroll in a class?”

“What if I give up halfway? Isn’t that a waste of effort?”

These concerns are entirely normal! I’ve had all of them, and many of my friends have been stuck at this stage for years.

We often think learning programming is like building a house: first, you lay the foundation (learn computer basics), then build the walls (learn syntax), and finally, decorate (work on projects). Missing any step means you can’t proceed, so we spend three years just preparing materials without even a shadow of a house.

What’s more frustrating is that many people enroll in classes or buy courses, only to find that what the teacher covers has nothing to do with what they want to do. You want to create a tool to automatically organize files, but the teacher is discussing binary tree traversal; you want to scrape data from a website, but the course is still teaching how to install Python.

This misalignment can be incredibly discouraging, leading you to comfort yourself with, “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.”

The truth is, it’s not that you can’t do it; it’s that the method is wrong.

Vibe Coding Requires Just a Vague Idea and the Right AI

What’s the reality?

The threshold for Vibe Coding is far lower than you might think.

You don’t need to:

• Understand computer principles
• Memorize all the syntax
• Have strong mathematical skills
• Buy expensive equipment

You only need:

• A vague idea (even if you can’t articulate it clearly)
• A reliable AI tool
• The courage to try and learn through mistakes

It’s that simple.

Let me share a true story.

I have a friend who is a pure liberal arts student, majoring in journalism in college, and worked as an editor at a publishing house after graduation. Last year, she had a sudden thought: “Can I create a tool to automatically highlight typos and grammatical errors in my articles?”

In the past, she would have just thought about it and moved on. But this time, she was different. She opened AiPy and told the AI, “I want to check for common errors in my articles, like the misuse of ‘的地得’, repeated words, and long sentences that are hard to read.”

The AI generated a Python script for her on the spot. Although the first version was not perfect, she iterated on it while using it, saying things like, “This has too many false positives,” “Can it support a custom word list?” and “Can the export format be changed to Word?”

Two weeks later, she not only had a handy proofreading tool but also learned concepts like regular expressions, file reading and writing, and function encapsulation along the way. Now she can use Vibe Coding for even more tasks, such as batch processing author submissions, automatically generating book directories, and even analyzing reader sentiment in comments.

She said, “Programming isn’t that mysterious; it’s just chatting with AI to get it to help me work.”

This is the core secret of Vibe Coding: You don’t need to become an expert; you just need to become someone who knows how to ask questions.

After You Have a Theme and General Idea, AI Can Generate Code in Bulk in a Short Time

Let’s break down the standard process of Vibe Coding, and you’ll find it astonishingly simple.

Step 1: Clarify the Problem You Want to Solve

Don’t start by thinking, “I want to learn Python,” but rather ask yourself, “What repetitive tasks have been bothering me lately?” “What data do I want to analyze but don’t know how to handle?” “Is there a small tool that can enhance my quality of life?”

The more specific the problem, the better. For example:

• ❌ “I want to learn data analysis”
• ✅ “I want to automatically categorize and summarize my monthly credit card statements”
• ❌ “I want to create a website”
• ✅ “I want to create a page to showcase photos of my pets, with the ability to filter by age”

Step 2: Tell Your Idea to the AI

At this point, don’t hold back; speak plainly. AI is not an examiner and doesn’t require you to use the most professional terminology.

You can say things like:

• “Help me write a program that moves all JPG images from my desktop to the ‘Pictures’ folder”
• “I want a script that automatically sends me a weather forecast email every day at 9 AM”
• “Create a webpage that calculates the greatest common divisor of two numbers, with a nice interface”

If your initial description isn’t clear, that’s okay; the AI will ask you follow-up questions, and you can provide more details. This process itself helps clarify your thoughts.

Step 3: Run the Code and See the Results

After the AI generates the code, just click run. If it works, great; if not, check the error messages.

Don’t be afraid of errors; they provide clues from the AI about where adjustments are needed. Copy the error message to the AI, and it will help you fix it.

Step 4: Iterate and Optimize

The results from the first run are often not perfect, and that’s completely normal. What you need to do is:

• “This feature is good, but can we add a progress bar?”
• “The speed is a bit slow; can it be optimized?”
• “The interface is too ugly; let’s change the color scheme”

With each iteration, you get closer to your ideal tool while also gaining a deeper understanding of the code.

Throughout the entire process, you might not have written a single line of code, but you’ve completed the entire workflow from needs analysis to product launch. That’s the charm of Vibe Coding.

AiPy: A Domestic Tool That Achieves This and Can Help Improve and Run Code

When it comes to useful Vibe Coding tools, I must recommend a domestic gem—AiPy.

Why do I recommend it? Because it’s genuinely designed for ordinary people in China.

1. Zero Configuration, Ready to Use

Many programming environments can deter half of the people: installing Python, configuring environment variables, installing dependencies… By the time you’re ready to write code, your enthusiasm is already drained.

AiPy eliminates all of that. Open the software, create a new task, and start chatting with AI. It’s that simple.

2. Chinese Interaction, No Communication Barriers

Some foreign tools are usable, but describing needs in English often feels lacking. More importantly, they may have specific requirements regarding network environments. When it comes to localized scenarios, like “help me scrape product reviews from a certain platform” or “analyze WeChat articles,” the AI might not understand.

AiPy’s AI fully comprehends the Chinese context. When you say, “Extract the ID numbers from this Excel file,” it knows you want regex matching; when you say, “Create a lottery program with adjustable winning probabilities,” it understands you need random number generation.

3. Not Only Generates but Also Improves and Runs Code

This is where AiPy excels. Many tools can only generate code, and then you have to figure out how to run it yourself. Encounter an error? Good luck searching Stack Overflow.

AiPy is different; it has a built-in execution environment. Once you finish writing the code, just click run. If there’s an error, send the error message back to the AI, and it will automatically fix it. After fixing, run it again until it succeeds.

This “generate → run → fix” loop is the complete embodiment of Vibe Coding.

4. Abundant Templates and Cases

Not sure where to start? AiPy offers a wealth of ready-made templates: batch file processing, data scraping, automated office tasks, game development… Just pick something that interests you, tweak it, and you can use it.

As you use it, you’ll naturally become curious: “What does this piece of code do?” “What happens if I change this parameter?” Learning with questions is ten times more efficient than slogging through textbooks.

Personal Experience

At this point, I must confess my identity.

I’m the “pure liberal arts student” mentioned at the beginning. I have a master’s degree in Chinese language and literature, and my work experience has nothing to do with coding. The first time I heard about Python, I thought it was a type of snake.

So why did I start exploring Vibe Coding?

The reason is quite mundane—laziness.

There were too many repetitive tasks at work that drove me crazy: organizing meeting minutes, summarizing data, batch renaming files… Every time I did these tasks, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if a robot could help me? Later, I realized that this “robot” was code, and the process of creating the robot wasn’t as difficult as I thought.

My first Vibe Coding project was an “automatic statistics tool for WeChat group messages.”

Here’s the thing: we have a project group where dozens of people speak every day, and my boss asked me to tally how many messages each person sent and what the active time slots were. Counting manually? I’d probably be counting until dawn.

So I opened AiPy and told the AI, “I want to export the chat records from the WeChat group and then count how many messages each person sent, preferably generating a bar chart.”

The AI provided a piece of code, but the first version failed because the format of WeChat chat records was quite complex. I fed the error message back to the AI, and it adjusted the parsing logic. On the second run, it succeeded!

Seeing the generated statistical chart on the screen was an indescribable sense of achievement. It wasn’t because the code was beautifully written, but because I had genuinely created a tool that solved a real problem.

Since then, I’ve been completely hooked.

I’ve used Vibe Coding to create:

• An automatic downloader for public account articles (no more manual saving)
• A personal resume generator (automatically generate PDFs from input information)
• A stock price alert tool (automatically send emails when prices drop below a psychological threshold)
• Even a few rudimentary mini-games (though they’re quite simple, they’re playable and great for wasting time!)

Of course, I’m not a genius, and the code I write is quite basic. But that’s not important; what matters is that I broke the psychological barrier of “programming has nothing to do with me.”

Looking back, I realize that Vibe Coding has given me not just a few small tools but also confidence. When faced with repetitive tasks, I no longer complain, “Why do I have to do this again?” Instead, I think, “Can I automate this with code?” This shift in mindset is more valuable than learning any specific skill. Don’t worry about not having enough tokens; just fill in c8W3 at the invitation code section for two million tokens.

A Message to Those Hesitating

If you’ve read this far and that little flame in your heart is already ignited, congratulations—you’ve taken the most important step.

If you’re still hesitating, I want to share a few thoughts with you.

First, don’t wait until you’re “ready” to start.

You will never have a day when you’re “completely ready.” Work will be busy, life will have surprises, and your energy will fluctuate. The best time to start is now. Even if you only spend 15 minutes today chatting with AI about the simplest idea, that’s progress.

Second, allow yourself to do poorly.

Your first project will likely be rough; the code may be redundant, and the interface may be ugly. That’s okay; completing something usable is a thousand times more important than perfection. Create something functional first, then optimize it gradually.

Third, find your “pain point drive.”

Don’t learn just for the sake of learning; learn to solve problems. Think about what repetitive tasks in your work and life annoy you—that’s your best learning material. Explore with questions, and motivation will flow continuously.

Fourth, join a community; don’t fight alone.

There are many Vibe Coding enthusiasts on platforms like Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili. See what others have created, share your work, and help each other with questions. The power of community will take you further.

Finally, let me share a motto that is also my personal mantra:

“Programming is not a game for geniuses; it’s a lever for ordinary people.”

You don’t need extraordinary talent, a formal background, or a lot of time. You just need an idea, an AI tool, and a bit of action.

The door to Vibe Coding is wide open; come in and take a seat. Who knows, the next ordinary person to change their work and life with code could be you.

Bonus: Three Super Simple Vibe Coding Beginner Exercises

If you’re eager to get started, here are three exercises that even beginners can complete, each taking no more than 40 minutes:

Exercise 1: File Organization Assistant

• Goal: Move all PDF files from the Downloads folder to a “Documents” subfolder.
• Prompt: “Help me write a Python script that scans the Downloads folder and moves all files with a .pdf extension to the ‘Documents’ folder. If the folder doesn’t exist, create it.”

Exercise 2: Daily Poetry Bot

• Goal: Randomly display a line of ancient poetry every day.
• Prompt: “Create a program that randomly selects a line from a list of ancient poetry and prints it out, preferably showing the author and dynasty.”

Exercise 3: Simple To-Do List

• Goal: Command-line version of a TODO List that allows adding and viewing tasks.
• Prompt: “Write a to-do list program where users can input ‘add buy groceries’ to add a task and ’list’ to view all tasks. Tasks should be saved in a text file.”

Completing these three exercises will officially introduce you to the world of Vibe Coding. After that, unleash your imagination!

Remember: Code is your servant, not your master. Let it work for you, and don’t be intimidated by it.

Good luck, future Vibe Coder!