Is the vibe coding era over? The AI guru who coined the term says the time has come for agentic engineering
The era of vibe coding may be over. AI guru Andrzej Karpathy believes the world will now move towards a new way of using AI to write code, which he calls agentic engineering. Here’s what it means.
We’ve all heard of vibe coding – using AI to write code. And in recent months, vibe coding has become increasingly popular. However, AI guru Andrzej Karpathy, who coined the term, believes we are now moving towards a new style of coding, which he calls “Agent Engineering”.
On X, Carpathy shared a post explaining his thoughts about the future of coding. He explained that he did not expect the term vibe coding to be so widely used. Almost every tech company or personality in the past year has mentioned vibe coding in some form or the other. He further added, “Vibe coding is now mentioned as a major memorable ‘contribution’ on my Wikipedia and even its article is longer”.
However, when Andrzej Karpathy introduced the term vibe coding in February 2025, the scenario was different. “The capabilities of large language models (LLMs) were so low that you would mostly use Vibe coding for fun projects, demos, and explorations,” the AI pioneer explained.
Why Andrzej Karpathy says the vibe coding era is over
Over the past year, Karpathy claims there has been a significant change in the way AI is used, with Vibe coding becoming the default for programmers. He further added, “The goal is to claim benefits from the use of agents, but without compromising on the quality of the software.”
To capture this shift, Carpathy introduced a new term that he thinks better describes the new AI-assisted workflow: “Many people have tried to come up with a better name to differentiate it from vibe coding, personally my current favorite is ‘agent engineering’.”
What does agentic engineering mean?
The AI guru explained that he chose this term because humans have started using AI agents to write almost all code. Whereas humans themselves are now more focused on what the agent creates. “‘Agent’ because the new default is that 99% of the time you’re not writing the code directly, you’re the one orchestrating the agents who do that and acting as oversight,” he wrote.
But, while on the surface this may seem to be a simple task, Andrzej Karpathy confirms that it is a skill that must be learned and developed, thus we get the second part of this term. “‘Engineering’ emphasizes that there’s an art and a science and expertise to it. It’s something you can learn and get better at, it has a different kind of depth to it,” Carpathy said.
Karpathy’s comments come at a time when using AI to write code has virtually become mainstream. Not only this, NodeJS creator Ryan Dahl recently said that the era of humans writing code is over.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also praised Vibe Coding in the past. And a few days ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he felt sad and useless after the AI startup released Codex, a Vibe coding app for Mac.
