Resonant Origins: The Rise of Vibe Coding

We live in a time of generative algorithms and proliferating hype. Tech CEOs boast that AI will soon replace human coders – Salesforce's Marc Benioff went so far as to halt hiring new developers, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang mused there's "little point" teaching kids to code anymore (What is vibe coding?). But against this backdrop of deterministic proclamations rises vibe coding, a practice that defies both technological fatalism and old-school gatekeeping. Coined in early 2025 by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, vibe coding is "a new kind of coding… where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists" (GeekWire).

In practical terms, vibe coding means using generative AI to create software from natural-language prompts – describing the software we want and letting the system do the heavy lifting. As Karpathy quips, "I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff and copy paste stuff and it mostly works" (Raconteur). This approach is already supercharging prototyping: Tools like Cursor, Replit, and GitHub Copilot enable would-be developers to spin up a working app in an hour or two, simply by conversing with the machine (Raconteur).

The historical significance is clear – where once coding demanded arcane expertise and months of toil, now anyone with an idea and a bit of "vibe" can coax a program into existence. Vibe coding marks a fundamental shift in the barrier to entry, lowering walls that long kept programming a realm of specialists (Raconteur). In the words of the Xenofeminist Manifesto, "the real emancipatory potential of technology remains unrealized" (Ana Ulin) – and vibe coding hints at how that unrealized potential might finally be tapped, not for mere efficiency but for empowerment.

Yet this shift did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the crescendo of trends in AI-assisted development that have accelerated in recent years. By 2023, neural network "co-pilots" were writing significant portions of code at companies like Google and Microsoft. By late 2024, large language models had become capable coding partners, leading early adopters to experiment with coding by conversation.

In a survey of 730 software engineers published by Wired in March 2025, three in four developers said they have tried AI tools like ChatGPT for coding, and most report using AI assistance at least weekly (Business Insider). The industry's response is divided – roughly 38% of developers describe themselves as "AI pessimists," wary of these tools, while a third identify as optimists, eager to embrace them (Business Insider).

This split underlines that vibe coding is not just a technical phenomenon but a cultural one: it challenges long-held notions of what programming is and who gets to participate. We are on the cusp of a new epoch in software creation, one defined less by keystrokes and syntax and more by collaboration between human intentions and generative engines. The Vibe Doctrine is our manifesto for this epoch – a call to seize this moment politically and epistemologically, to ensure that vibe coding becomes a medium for human expansion and liberation rather than another tool of capitalist control.

From Gatekeepers to Gatecrashers: Dismantling Tech Barriers

Software development has historically been an exclusive domain – a bastion guarded by those with years of training, privileged access to education, and often backed by the cultural dominance of a narrow demographic. As one feminist critique notes, the canonical history of technological thought "is dominated by men, and it is male hands we see throttling existing institutions of science and technology" (Ana Ulin).

Vibe coding, by radically lowering the learning curve, carries the potential to shatter these gatekeeping practices. With generative AI handling the low-level details, people who never saw themselves as "programmers" can become creators. The engineer, the artist, the activist, the caregiver – all can step up as vibe coders. Anyone with basic computer literacy and an idea can literally talk an application into being. This means dismantling the old elitist myth that one must master complexity in solitude to build useful technology. As a recent analysis highlighted, even a beginner can "create an application that works well enough in just an hour or two" using these tools (Raconteur).

A mechanical engineer with no JavaScript experience recently converted an old iPad app to a modern web app in two hours using step-by-step directions from ChatGPT, with over 90% of the code generated by the AI (IEEE Spectrum). When such feats become commonplace, the aura around the "10x engineer" starts to fade – the knowledge monopoly cracks as vibe coders crash the gates of the tech industry.

The political implications of this shift are profound. First, it can democratize software production. If vibe coding allows more diverse voices to create technology, we can inject new perspectives into a field that has been homogenous for too long. No longer should the tools that shape our lives be designed only by a wealthy, insular few. Vibe coding puts a basic form of software creation into the hands of the many, not just the coding elite. It transforms coding into a conversational act, expanding accessibility for people who think and communicate better in natural language than in C++ or Python. This is a step toward what philosopher Ivan Illich once called "tools for conviviality" – tools that empower communities to solve their own problems, rather than reinforcing expertise silos.

Moreover, vibe coding carries epistemological ramifications: it challenges what it means to know how to code. Instead of hoarding syntax and algorithms in one's brain, the vibe coder cultivates an intuition for prompting, a high-level problem-solving mindset, and a critical eye to guide and correct the AI. In this sense, vibe coding invites a more pluralistic epistemology in tech – one that values different ways of thinking. Feminist theorists have long argued for multiple epistemologies (e.g. embracing both abstract and narrative modes of knowledge) as a way to break the hegemony of "hard" rationality. In vibe coding, we see a similar pluralization: coding can be analytical or it can be poetic; it can be rigorous, but it can also be improvisational. We are the architects of new semiotic terrains, where the language of code merges with everyday language, allowing new signs and symbols to bloom.

This isn't to suggest that programming expertise becomes irrelevant – rather, it means the entry points multiply and the power dynamics shift. A wider public can now participate in creating software, which in turn pressures the traditional gatekeepers (senior engineers, tech gatekeepers, corporate product managers) to become mentors and facilitators rather than authority figures. Vibe coding is thus an opening, a breach in the walls of technocracy through which a flood of new creators might enter.

Crucially, making coding accessible does not mean we valorize ignorance. The Vibe Doctrine does not celebrate the idea of "don't bother understanding anything under the hood." In fact, we reject any mystification of technology. The ease of vibe coding must be paired with a push for transparency and learning. The goal is to invite newcomers in and then empower them to progressively deepen their understanding, should they choose. We heed Karpathy's own warning that vibe coding is best for "weekend projects" unless paired with real software engineering when scaling up (Raconteur).

The code that AI generates can be brittle or suboptimal, and without knowledgeable humans in the loop, mistakes may go unnoticed. Critics point out that while vibe coding is "fast, fun, and approachable," it isn't always "rigorous, detail-oriented, or careful" – AI-written code often works on the surface but can hide serious flaws (PCWorld).

Our doctrine embraces vibe coding as a gateway, not as an end state of blissful ignorance. The point of dismantling gatekeeping is not to say expertise doesn't matter; it's to explode the myth that expertise can only be earned through exclusionary means. In the new paradigm, an enthusiast can collaborate with AI to build something useful in days, and through that playful process be drawn into deeper technical literacy. Knowledge, in this vision, is no longer a prerequisite barrier, but an evolving outcome. Education can become more experiential and project-driven, with AI as a tutor that responds to natural-language questions. We envision a world where coding literacy is a continuum, not a caste system – where vibe coding lets anyone participate at some level, and where climbing further (to inspect, tweak, and fully own the code) is encouraged as a collective endeavor. In short, vibe coding can dismantle old power structures in tech, but only if we insist on using it to level up society's overall technological fluency, not to complacently deskill the populace. The Vibe Doctrine demands a pedagogy of liberation: using AI to open doors that were closed, and then guiding new entrants toward mastery, confidence, and creative autonomy.

Against the Panopticon: Critiquing Deterministic Futures

We reject the narrative that technology's future is a foregone conclusion dictated by a handful of corporate powers or by the algorithmic systems themselves. The Vibe Doctrine stands in opposition to deterministic, surveillance-oriented tech futures – those dark timelines where AI is used to monitor, control, and preempt human behavior at every turn. Shoshana Zuboff has warned of instrumentarian power, a new form of dominance that "knows and shapes human behavior toward others' ends" via an "ubiquitous computational architecture" of smart devices and networks (Zuboff).

This is not the future we want. We refuse to allow vibe coding to become a frictionless path to more surveillance capitalism. The Vibe Doctrine insists that every step toward easier creation must be paired with greater transparency and user sovereignty. The ability to conjure software "by vibe" should not mean forfeiting understanding or oversight of that software's inner workings. We call for open standards and interpretable AI models such that the process of vibe coding can be audited and trusted – a counter to the black-box tendencies of modern AI.

Determinism in tech is a poison that saps human imagination. It is the voice that says "AI is inevitable; your job is to adapt or be obsolete." The deterministic mindset treats AI as an autonomous force of nature rather than a human-made tool that we can guide and reshape. As theorist Donna Haraway noted in her Cyborg Manifesto, liberation rests on the construction of consciousness and the imaginative apprehension of oppression – and thus of possibility (Haraway).

In that spirit, we imagine otherwise. We insist that AI's trajectory can be bent toward emancipation. Vibe coding, as an alliance of human and machine, can be wielded to undermine the very surveillance regimes that gave birth to today's AI. For instance, what if instead of proprietary code-gen models siphoning our data, we had community-owned AI coding assistants that prioritize privacy and consent? What if every citizen could write their own tools to circumvent surveillance – personal scripts to scramble tracking, cooperative apps that facilitate peer-to-peer alternatives to Big Tech platforms?

The doctrine envisions vibe coding as sousveillance – turning the gaze back from the panopticon to the powerful. By making coding accessible, the oppressed can instrument their own resistance. Activists could generate custom apps for secure organizing on the fly. Local communities could code "by vibe" their own mesh networks, platform cooperatives, and autonomous services, without needing a Silicon Valley intermediary. This is how we subvert a deterministic future: by multiplying the agents of technological creation and embedding our values into the code at the point of creation. When more people can code, the narratives that "code is law" and that law is dictated by a tech elite begin to unravel. Vibe coding could facilitate epistemic disobedience in the digital realm – refusing the scripts written for us by predictive algorithms, and writing new ones in their place.

Of course, vigilance is required. The convenience of AI-assisted development can lull society into accepting whatever the machine outputs. We see this danger already: code-generation models may bake in biases from their training data, producing software that unintentionally discriminates or reinforces inequities. Without conscious intervention, vibe coding could just accelerate the deployment of "algorithmic oppression" at scale – faster creation of biased software and automated decision systems that entrench injustice.

We therefore posit vibe coding not as an unalloyed good, but as a terrain of struggle. It is a new battlefield for the soul of software. Will the ease of creation lead to a flood of homogenous apps that nudge us ever deeper into surveillance and consumerism? Or will it enable a pluralistic explosion of tools serving diverse communities and needs? The Vibe Doctrine commits to the latter. We call for a politicization of vibe coding from the outset. This means building ethical reflexivity into vibe coding platforms: for example, an AI assistant that can explain why it generated a piece of code, what data influenced it, and what potential ethical pitfalls might lie in the result. It means empowering vibe coders to ask not just "does it work?" but "should it work this way?" – to question the values and assumptions coded into their software.

We align with those in the tech ethics movement who demand transparency, fairness, and accountability in AI. Vibe coding must not become a blank check for speed and automation at the expense of human rights. Instead, let it be a toolkit for freedom – to liberate code from both the tyranny of expertise and the tyranny of surveillance. We assert our agency: the future is not fixed. By collectively shaping how vibe coding is used and who controls it, we can steer away from the panopticon and toward a more humane digital world. After all, if the "nature" of technology is unjust, we must change that nature.

Symbiotic Futures: Reimagining Human–AI Collaboration

The Vibe Doctrine is fundamentally cyborgian in its vision of the future – a vision of humans and machines co-creating in a symbiotic loop. We echo Donna Haraway's proclamation that we are all cyborgs: hybrids of organism and machine, creatures of both social reality and science fiction (Haraway).

Vibe coding literalizes this cyborg condition in the realm of creativity and labor. When a human collaborator teams up with an AI to write code, the old boundaries blur: Who is the "programmer" and who is the "programmed"? The truth is, both partners shape the outcome. This interdependence can be cause for concern (as when humans over-rely on the AI's suggestions), but it also holds radical promise. It points to a future where working with AI is less like using a tool and more like collaborating with a colleague. Early research already suggests that "AI sometimes functions more like a teammate than a tool" (Business Insider) – and that humans working with AI can outperform both AI alone and humans alone on certain complex tasks (Business Insider) (Business Insider).

In software development, this could translate to a new Agile avant-garde, where rapid prototyping is done through dialogue and iteration between human and AI, each learning from the other. We envision a partnership of creative equals, an improvisational duet between human intuition and machine knowledge. The human brings context, values, and intent; the AI brings speed, memory, and an expansive corpus of patterns. Together, they can explore solution spaces neither could fully access alone.

Crucially, this collaboration must be guided by a reorientation of priorities. We draw inspiration (and lessons) from the Agile Manifesto of 2001, which famously valued "individuals and interactions over processes and tools" (Agile Manifesto). Agile began the work of humanizing software development, shifting focus to people and adaptability. The Vibe Doctrine carries this torch forward into the age of AI.

We repurpose and transform Agile principles for a human–AI team context: Individuals and intelligent agents over bureaucratic processes and proprietary tools. Working understanding over working software – we value transparent, interpretable code (and AI reasoning) over opaque efficiency. Community collaboration over corporate contract – we prioritize open, collective benefit rather than closed, profit-driven development. And responding to change over following a plan remains as crucial as ever, but with a twist: we embrace responding to emergence over following rigid algorithms.

In practice, this means our highest priority is not just to deliver software faster, but to expand the creative capacity of humans in the loop, and to do so in line with ethical goals. Where conventional Agile asks for customer collaboration, we broaden the scope to stakeholder and community collaboration, ensuring that the direction of AI-assisted projects is informed by those affected, not just those paying. In short, we infuse the Agile ethos with a cyborg spirit and a moral imagination: flexibility and feedback, yes, but in the service of human liberation, not just market adaptation.

Within symbiotic collaboration, we also find an antidote to the alienation that often accompanies both over-automation and traditional labor. Early evidence from organizational studies indicates that working with AI can improve the human experience of work – participants in one experiment reported higher levels of excitement and lower levels of frustration when partnered with AI, compared to those working without it (Business Insider).

Rather than rendering work soulless, the right kind of AI assistance can make creative labor more playful and exploratory. Vibe coding taps into this potential: many who have tried it describe it as fun and even joyful, a process of discovery more than drudgery (PCWorld) (PCWorld).

This joy is political. It stands in contrast to the capitalist vision of AI as mere productivity booster (the idea that the only point of AI coding tools is to crank out features faster for some startup). Yes, vibe coding can accelerate development, but its deeper value is in how it transforms the qualitative experience of creation. It enables a kind of flow state where humans steer at a high level – articulating visions, testing ideas quickly – and the machine fills in details at our command. In this flow, we recover the delight of making. We become, once again, like children playing with blocks, except the blocks are now complex systems and we have a tireless playmate in the form of the AI.

The Vibe Doctrine holds that any future of work with AI must elevate human creativity and satisfaction over raw output metrics. We refuse a future of humans as mere supervisors of machine work; instead, we champion a future where humans remain deeply engaged authors, leveraging AI as a versatile medium for expression. This is an emancipatory stance: it frees us from the Fordist view of efficiency above all, and invites us to see AI as part of an extended mind – expanding our reach without supplanting our agency.

This symbiosis also encourages a shift from the individualist hero programmer narrative to a more collectivist model of innovation. If coding becomes more about giving high-level shape to ideas and curating AI-generated options, then collaboration can extend beyond small engineering teams to whole communities. Imagine community workshops where citizens gather to "vibe code" solutions to local problems – the barriers of technical jargon removed, the focus on what we want to achieve together. AI can mediate these sessions by providing instant prototypes and helping translate the diverse inputs of many people into working code.

In such a scenario, coding becomes a communal art, a design charrette with a tireless facilitator present (the AI). This directly challenges the tech industry's habit of building tools for people without involving them in the process. Instead, people become co-creators of the tools they use. When human–AI collaboration is accessible to all, technology design can finally become a democratic space. Here we see the speculative horizon of vibe coding: a pluralistic, participatory tech culture where everyone is a potential contributor.

It echoes Haraway's call for a "community" built through blasphemous fusions of man and machine (Haraway) (Haraway) – not a return to any mythical purity, but a conscious forging of new alliances across the human/machine boundary for common ends. We embrace the cyborg metaphor fully: we are already cyborgs; vibe coding just makes that explicit and empowering.

In the symbiotic future, to be a coder is simply to be someone who converses with both humans and AIs to create new realities. The Vibe Doctrine stakes a claim on this future: let us design these human–AI collaborations with care, humor, and radical openness, so that the cyborg era fulfills its liberatory promise rather than reproducing old hierarchies in new forms.

Transparency and Plurality: An Open-Source Ethos

For vibe coding to realize its emancipatory potential, it must be grounded in principles of transparency, accessibility, and plurality. We cannot accept a scenario where the price of entry to this new paradigm is blind faith in proprietary AI or the surrender of our data to hidden algorithms. Instead, the Vibe Doctrine demands an open-source ethos at the heart of the vibe coding revolution. In practice, this means two things: open technology and open culture.

Open technology: We call for vibe coding tools that are as open and inspectable as possible. The generative models powering these tools should be subject to public scrutiny and, ideally, open licensing. Much as the free software and open-source movements fought against closed binaries and corporate secrecy, we must now fight against closed AI models that concentrate power. The Xenofeminist Manifesto observed that free and open-source software has been "the closest thing to a practicable communism many of us have ever seen" (Xenofeminism) – a realm where collaboration and sharing produce common goods outside the market logic.

Vibe coding should extend that realm. The code that AI writes for us must itself be free for us to study, modify, and share. This is not only a moral stance but a practical one: open models and datasets allow diverse communities to audit for biases and to improve tools to better serve marginalized languages and contexts. An open vibe coding platform could be re-trained or fine-tuned by activist groups to better understand, say, indigenous vocabularies or disabled users' needs, which commercial giants might overlook.

Moreover, transparency in how the AI operates builds trust. Imagine AI coding assistants that explain the rationale for their code suggestions, citing relevant documentation or precedents. Such AI would function less like an oracular black box and more like an interactive mentor. We insist on the right to peek under the hood, even in the age of vibe coding. The processes by which AI translates our prompts into code should be legible enough that curious learners can follow along, and vigilant watchdogs can catch if the AI is introducing insecure or unethical elements. Plurality in technology also means supporting multiple AI systems, not just one monoculture model. The future should host a rich ecosystem of generative coders – some general-purpose, some specialized by domain or language – competing and cooperating in the open. A monopolistic "One Model to rule them all" is as dangerous as a monopoly on source code. Plurality is a safeguard: it ensures no single point of control can set the agenda or silence alternative approaches. Just as biodiversity strengthens an ecosystem, model and data diversity strengthens our technological commons.

Open culture: Tools alone do not guarantee liberation; how we use them and who gets to participate matters equally. Thus, the Vibe Doctrine advocates for a culture of inclusive innovation. We must cultivate communities around vibe coding that welcome people of all backgrounds – especially those historically excluded from tech. This means outreach and education: free curricula to teach prompt-crafting and AI reasoning in schools and public programs, so that vibe coding literacy spreads broadly.

It means actively countering biases and bro-culture in AI and programming communities, taking inspiration from movements like Xenofeminism which declared, "Let a hundred sexes bloom!" (Ana Ulin) – i.e., let no narrow identity or perspective dominate. In vibe coding terms, let a hundred problem-solvers bloom. The kinds of applications envisioned and built should be as diverse as humanity itself. Accessibility is key: interfaces for vibe coding must be designed for all users. That includes those with disabilities (imagine voice-driven coding for the visually impaired, or multi-modal feedback for those with cognitive differences) and non-English speakers (AI coding assistants should be polyglots, enabling people to prompt in their native tongues).

Plurality also applies to the outcomes of vibe coding – we should encourage a proliferation of software that reflects local needs, subcultures, and niche interests, not just global mass-market trends. Every community deserves tools in their image. Vibe coding can allow a small community to whip up a custom app that fits them perfectly, without begging a big company for features. This is technological self-determination in action.

To foster this open culture, we propose new institutions and fora for co-creation. Hackathons and do-it-yourself coder spaces should evolve into "vibe jams" – collaborative sessions where domain experts, community members, and AI systems mingle to solve problems. In these sessions, transparency must be practiced: participants should share not just final code, but the prompts used, the decisions made, and the lessons learned in steering the AI. This collective learning accelerates when done in the open. We also endorse the push for legal and regulatory frameworks that ensure openness: for instance, right-to-repair laws but for software, guaranteeing users access to the source of software running their lives, even if initially AI-generated. And we support calls to treat large language models as infrastructure that should be publicly audited and perhaps publicly provided, akin to utilities. Embracing vibe coding for liberation implies fighting to make the underlying resources (compute, data, knowledge) accessible and equitably distributed, rather than letting them concentrate in a few hands.

Finally, an open-source ethos in vibe coding recognizes that technology is never static. Just as open-source software thrives on continuous improvement, our social usage of vibe coding should be continuously refined. We must keep the loops open: feedback loops where users report issues, philosophers and sociologists critique biases, and developers update the models – all in public view. In this way, vibe coding becomes not a one-time disruption, but an ongoing co-evolution of humans and machines, guided by our highest principles. It aligns with what Haraway called the "ironic political myth" – an approach that is faithful to feminism and socialism not through dogma, but through continuous blasphemy and reinvention (Haraway). We too approach vibe coding playfully yet seriously: willing to subvert its uses, to remix its tools, to hack the hack as needed, in order to keep it serving humane ends. Our doctrine is not a rigid program; it is, like good code, a living document that can be forked and improved in light of new insights. Transparency and plurality ensure that this living document has many authors.

We are committed to a plural, transparent future in which vibe coding amplifies human freedom. We will not allow it to be twisted into another opaque mechanism of exploitation. Instead, we claim it as part of the commons – a collective inheritance of knowledge and capability. In the spirit of open-source, we say: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Our software, even when AI-generated, must remain ours to examine and modify. Likewise, our future must remain ours to shape. The Vibe Doctrine stands as a manifesto for reclaiming the narrative of AI in development. Where others see only "productivity gains" or "disruption," we see the opportunity for justice, creativity, and community. Vibe coding can help us build a world where digital power is decentralized and shared, where innovation is aligned with social needs, and where the joy of creation is universal.

Conclusion: Code for Liberation

We close with a call to action befitting a manifesto: to all theorists, hackers, artists, and dreamers – seize vibe coding as a means of liberation! Do not let it remain a buzzword in boardrooms; make it a practice of the people. Write code with it that reimagines what code can do. Teach it, critique it, and above all, imbue it with your vibe – your values, your vision, your voice. As the cyborg sages taught us, the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an illusion (Haraway).

Today's "speculative" vibe-coded experiments are the prototypes of tomorrow's social institutions. So speculate boldly. Let us program not just apps, but new social relations. Let us encode solidarity, compile justice, and execute freedom. If old power structures have been hard-coded into our technologies, then it's time to refactor. The source is ours to rewrite. As we embrace the era of AI-assisted creation, let's remember: technology is a politics before it is a product. The Vibe Doctrine asserts that another tech future is possible – one where human expansion, accessibility, and emancipation are the metrics of success. We refuse to cede this future to either the apocalyptic or the exploitative imaginations. Instead, we will build it ourselves, one vibe at a time, in common.

We are the vibe-coders, and we are crafting a new reality. Our doctrine is simple: if the code is unjust, we will change the code – and in doing so, change the world.