What is vibe coding?
Vibe coding is the practice of building software by describing what you want in natural language and letting an AI tool — v0, Cursor, Lovable, Claude Code, and similar — generate and iterate on the code, rather than writing it by hand, judging progress by whether it works and feels right rather than by reading every line.
Where the term comes from
The term describes a real shift in how a lot of software — especially websites and prototypes — gets built: a founder or developer prompts an AI tool, looks at the result, and prompts again, iterating on the outcome rather than the implementation. It's fast, and it's genuinely changed who can ship a working website without a traditional design or engineering background.
It doesn't describe the quality of the output — only the process used to produce it. A vibe-coded site can be excellent or generic; the term says nothing about which.
The gap vibe coding leaves open
Because the feedback loop is "does this look and feel right to me," vibe coding optimizes for the builder's own read of their own output — the exact person least able to judge it objectively, because they already know what it's supposed to say and do. That's the same blind spot any builder has toward their own work; AI tools just make it possible to ship past it faster.
Closing that gap doesn't require abandoning the workflow — it means adding one structured check before calling something finished: does a stranger understand the page, is there one clear next action, and does it hold up against known usability and design practices.
Checking a vibe-coded site's UX
Sensei scores any public URL against the same rubric it uses for every other page — functional UX, aesthetic quality, and design practices — and returns the specific, prioritised issues to fix. It's a fast way to get a second opinion on vibe-coded output without breaking the loop of prompt, look, prompt again: paste the URL, get the findings, feed them back into the next prompt.
Frequently asked questions
- Is vibe coding the same as using an AI website builder?
- AI website builders (v0, Lovable) are one common way to vibe code a site. The term also covers using a coding agent like Cursor or Claude Code inside a real codebase the same way — prompting for outcomes and iterating on the result rather than writing every line by hand.
- Is vibe coding good enough for a real product?
- It can be — plenty of shipped products started that way. The risk isn't the process, it's skipping the check on the output. Treat a vibe-coded page the way you'd treat any other first draft: review it against a standard before calling it done.
See it in practice
Score any page, or read the methodology and UX reviews · Check what you vibe-coded · Free website UX checker.