From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering
Karpathy retired the name because 91.5% of vibe-coded applications shipped in early 2026 with at least one AI-introduced flaw. I still say 'vibe coding' even if the Tech Bros hate it.
THE VIBE
From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering
Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” in 2025. He ‘retired’ the name in early 2026 and replaced it with “agentic engineering.” Same general idea — humans working with AI agents to build software — with a more deliberate posture. Specs before code. Bounded scope per change. Review every output the agent produces.
The reason for the rename is a number. Per security research summarized in TechTimes’ May 24 coverage, 91.5% of vibe-coded applications shipped in early 2026 with at least one AI-introduced flaw. The same coverage cited a February 2026 industry tracker finding that 63% of vibe-coding users are non-developers.
The wave of new builders is mostly people who didn’t come up through traditional engineering — which is the whole point. And the wave is also shipping software that is structurally insecure most of the time. Both things are true at once. A movement that ships nine of ten apps with AI-introduced flaws cannot survive a second news cycle on its current name. So the name changed, I guess?
I think the bigger change is the posture under the name.
Vibe coding was permission: permission for a non-engineer to build software without first earning the credentials. Permission to skip the parts of engineering that felt gatekeeping. Permission to ship a working app on a Friday evening because the agent was fast and the feedback loop was solid. The permission was real. A lot of useful software got built that would not have existed otherwise.
Hell, my ADHD app (Codie) and my legal tech startup (Batesly) were vibe coded.1
But the posture also had a cost. The cost was the discipline that traditional engineering builds into a developer’s instinct over years — the reflex to ask “what could break,” the reflex to read the diff, the reflex to write the test, the reflex to imagine the edge case. The agent does not have those reflexes. The non-engineer building with the agent does not yet have them either. So the work shipped without them.
Agentic engineering names the discipline back into the practice. Three things change in how the work gets done:
First, specs before code. Before asking the agent to write the thing, write down what the thing is supposed to do — input, output, edge cases, failure modes. The spec is short. It can be five sentences. But it exists before the agent starts. The agent’s job becomes “implement this spec,” not “figure out what I meant.” That single change cuts the surface area of the bug class the agent introduces.
Second, narrow diffs. Don’t ask the agent to refactor a whole module. Ask the agent to change one function. Read the diff. Read the test. Approve or reject. Then the next change. This feels slow at first, but it really isn’t. It’s the pace at which work that doesn’t have to be redone later actually moves.
Third, review every output. Don’t skim, okay? Read every line. The agent is producing source code that will run on real data and affect real users. If you wouldn’t commit code from a junior engineer without reading it, don’t commit code from an agent without reading it. The agent is a tireless junior engineer who will produce as much code as you let it. The bottleneck is your reading. (See my piece about AI writing code like a confident intern here).
There’s a generational story under this. The non-engineer builder wave isn’t over — I’m sure as shit not going anywhere. It’s shifting from “fast” to “careful and also still fast.” The builders who survive the shift are the ones who absorbed the discipline that the first wave skipped. The ones who don’t will keep shipping the kind of software that the 91.5% number measures.
THE VERDICT
Quick Takes
The 91.5% number is the reason “vibe coding” had to be retired as a label. A movement that ships nine of ten apps with AI-introduced flaws does not get a second news cycle on a name that signals “we don’t review the code.” The rename is a survival move for the practice. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still using the term — I couldn’t care less if the Tech Bros judge me.
“Agentic engineering” is the version of vibe coding that survives a security audit. Same same, plus the missing discipline. If you build software and can’t defend the shipped code line by line, you aren’t doing agentic engineering yet. That’s a learnable shift, but it isn’t free.
The non-developer builder wave isn’t over — it’s sorting. The first wave proved the ‘unlock’ was real. The next wave will sort into the ones who internalize the spec-first discipline and the ones who keep shipping the apps the 91.5% stat is about. The sorting matters more for the careers it builds than for the apps.
THE CONFESSIONAL
I’m Still Building the Discipline
The discipline is harder to build than it looks from outside it.
The instinct that wants to skip the spec — the one that says “I know what I want, I’ll just describe it to the agent and edit later” — is a strong instinct. It’s also the exact instinct that produces the 91.5% bug count. Specs feel like overhead though. Until the third time you’ve rewritten the same function because the agent kept solving a different problem than the one you meant, and you finally write the spec, and the agent gets it right the first time, and you realize the spec was the work the whole time. Ughhhh.
Skimming a 200-line diff is not reading it, even if it feels like it. Reading it means reading every line and asking what each line does. That takes longer than skimming. It takes long enough that, when you start doing it, your per-change pace goes down while your per-shipped-feature pace stays the same, because the ratio of reworked changes drops.
I’m inside this shift. I’ve caught myself skipping the spec. I’ve caught myself skimming the diff. I haven’t perfected the posture. The reframe Karpathy named is a real thing to do, and you do it every working day, but you can lose the discipline in a week of speed mode if you let yourself… because ADHD…
If you’re building with an agent and you haven’t felt the discomfort of slowing down on purpose — your turn is coming.
— Rachel
Love hearing about how rigorous you are! And that you hired out to a contractor team for review of security. Awesome stuff, Rachel.