Big Tech pours billions into artificial intelligence with promises of world-changing breakthroughs. Valuations climb into the trillions. Job cuts mount in the thousands. Yet a different story unfolds among everyday users who treat AI as a playful collaborator rather than an existential force. They build small tools for personal problems. They experiment without grand ambitions. And they find genuine satisfaction in the process.
The practice known as vibe coding emerged in early 2025 when Andrej Karpathy, the prominent AI researcher and former Tesla and OpenAI leader, described a new way of working with large language models. He urged developers to “fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.” Wikipedia records the term’s rapid adoption, noting its selection as Collins English Dictionary Word of the Year for 2025. What began as slang for conversational prompting quickly spread beyond professional coders.
Business Insider captured the trend in a fresh report published today. Ordinary individuals, many with no formal programming background, now create functional apps to address narrow daily frustrations. The article contrasts these modest efforts against corporate AI spending that often lacks clear returns. Firefighters, parents, entrepreneurs and office workers alike turn vague ideas into working software through iterative chats with models like Claude or Gemini. The results rarely aim for unicorn status. They simply make life a bit smoother. And that, it turns out, delivers immediate value where many billion-dollar projects still struggle.
Consider Scott Klipper, a father who needed occasional help with childcare. He built an app to book one-off nannies for school pickups. Joe Poynton, a firefighter, created a grocery list organizer that sorts items by store aisle location, shaving minutes off shopping trips. A new mother designed a simple tracker to determine which baby bottles to use each day based on nutrition needs. These examples come from Business Insider’s ongoing series on the phenomenon, which profiles “normies” finding practical outlets for the technology.
Juliana Kaplan, a Business Insider reporter, tried the approach herself and detailed her experience in a companion piece. Assigned to cover the rise of such tools, she initially approached the topic with skepticism. She attempted to vibe code an application that would compare weekly deals at two New York grocery stores, one located at the top of a steep hill. The project taught her about web scraping, prompt refinement and iterative debugging. Though the final version pivoted to weighing discounts against the physical effort of the climb, Kaplan used it successfully to snag discounted mozzarella. “It adds a bit of whimsy,” she reflected, comparing the exercise to customizing a sparkling doughnut cursor in early HTML days. Her account shows how the method encourages critical thinking rather than deskilling.
Jayne Ingram-Roberts built Seatbee, a wedding seating chart generator. Users input constraints such as keeping work friends together or seating a sister far from a “drunk uncle.” The tool produces plans accordingly. It attracted more than 200 users for her own wedding planning. Her colleague Shayan Mirzazadeh, an account manager who failed computer science classes twice in college, created a Pilates flow tracker for his fiancée. Jonathan Butler, a 56-year-old entrepreneur, developed a construction management dashboard for his new home build. He likened the experience to working in a wood shop. “It’s like being in your wood shop making something,” Butler told Business Insider.
Maya Miller and Chloe Garden of the SiSTEM Collective hosted a workshop in New York for Black and Latina women in tech. Thirty participants, many complete beginners, prototyped tools during the session. Two focused on a hair care routine app that tracks products against goals like length growth or elasticity. Miller noted that such bespoke software had previously remained out of reach. Kyle Jensen, a developer at Yale School of Management, built an SAT prep application for his child, research tools for his wife and search aids for colleagues. He observed a “massive explosion” of interest among non-technical circles and predicted regular app deployment by everyday people in the near future.
Google Cloud offers one of the more accessible entry points. Its guide explains that vibe coding shifts the developer’s role from writing every line to guiding an AI through natural language conversation. The company credits Karpathy with coining the term in early 2025. Users describe desired outcomes. The model generates code, interface and logic. Iteration follows through feedback loops. Pure vibe coding embraces exploration and accepts occasional errors for speed. A more responsible variant adds user testing and ownership. Google’s AI Studio lets beginners generate and deploy simple apps with a single prompt, such as a startup name generator or a Python function to process CSV files. One-click deployment to environments like Cloud Run removes traditional infrastructure hurdles.
Other platforms have fueled adoption. Tools from Lovable, Replit, Cursor and Bolt.new appear repeatedly in user stories and analyses. Some creators start with high-level descriptions and refine through conversation. Others combine multiple agents for complex tasks. Recent X discussions reveal a split in opinion. Some call vibe coding “high-tech weaponized incompetence,” arguing it turns users into editors for unreliable outputs. Others counter that foundational knowledge improves results. “Skill depth makes AI far more useful,” posted one AI executive. “Vibe coding works better when you understand enough fundamentals to guide the tool, catch mistakes, and turn experiments into real products.”
Critics highlight risks. A Wikipedia entry on the topic catalogs security vulnerabilities, technical debt and reduced engagement with open-source projects. Studies cited there, including analyses from CodeRabbit and Veracode, show AI-generated code often carries more bugs. Linus Torvalds himself experimented with the method using Google’s Antigravity agent for a component of an audio effects tool, but the broader community debates its suitability for production systems. Yet for personal projects and rapid prototypes, the approach delivers.
Business Insider notes that while corporate AI investments face scrutiny over return on investment, vibe coders see instant payoffs. Their creations solve concrete problems without waiting for enterprise rollout. A dad gets reliable babysitter bookings. A firefighter spends less time in aisles. A couple manages wedding logistics without spreadsheets. These micro-solutions accumulate. And they teach users prompting techniques, basic debugging and system design along the way.
And the fun factor matters. Many compare the experience to early web customization or hobbyist woodworking. It feels creative. It sparks curiosity. Kaplan’s grocery app ultimately helped her save a few dollars and laugh about the hill climb. Others report similar small victories that compound into new skills and confidence. So the practice spreads not through hype but through tangible, personal utility.
Recent coverage reinforces the pattern. A Medium post from late May described one developer’s shift from searching Stack Overflow to directing AI as a creative partner, maintaining flow state across entire projects. LinkedIn conversations and Reddit threads in r/PromptEngineering and r/vibecoding show practitioners sharing tool lists to avoid sloppy outputs and conserve credits. YouTube tutorials on best practices for 2026 emphasize thinking in products, testing incrementally and integrating stacks rather than pure blind prompting.
Big Tech continues its high-stakes race. Valuations soar on the hope of transformative agents and autonomous systems. Yet alongside that frenzy runs a parallel current of quiet invention. Ordinary people, armed with accessible models and conversational interfaces, tinker. They solve the problems right in front of them. They learn. They share. The contrast could not be sharper. While executives justify massive outlays, vibe coders already enjoy returns on far smaller bets. Their wins may not move markets. But they improve days. And in an industry often accused of losing touch with real needs, that counts for something.
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