The State of Vibe Coding Update

Vibe Coding for Beginners, the guide by Frank Andrade (PyCoach)

Hey Everyone,

It appears like the vibe coding trend was an on-ramp to more Agentic AI. Since our first guide to Vibe Coding, a lot has changed - check out our Vibe Coding section. This is an important piece where I bundle a lot of things together, so consider sharing.

Today’s article is a guide to Vibe Coding for Beginners by Frank Andrade, PyCoach, of Artificial Corner.

Read Artificial Corner

Hype, Youth Adoption and Automation 😟

If you remember that Substack coined term: Vibecession which is a kind of neologism that refers to a disconnect between the economy of a country and the general public's negative perception of it. It appears we are facing a Vibe Crunch in our perception of AI as well in mid 2025, let me explain.

In the last few months, even ChatGPT has a different vibe with the rise of Sycophancy and the sudden realization the tech young people love is hurting their post-graduation job prospects. This could be compounded in a trade-tariff induced recession (65% likely now) where new levels of automation are highly likely to take hold during the downturn. We might already be seeing the first signs of this. A series of articles that started six days ago with Derek Thompson of The Atlantic really caught my attention.

Youth Unemployment caused by AI might be increasing:

What does Losing your job to AI have to do with Vibe Coding?

People, especially recent grads and students are getting MORE nervous about what vibe-coding and Agentic AI might lead to for not just their long-term careers but post graduation job prospects:

“Poll after poll has found that it’s the top concern that people have with AI: That AI will take jobs and make our working lives worse.” - Brian Merchant of Blood in the Machine Newsletter.

Fear that we will all become obsolete is back in fashion again, even as we give AI Infrastructure the big thumbs up with Billions of capital in America: (damned if you do, damned if you don’t: the Vibe crunch of AI of 2026)

Gennaro Cuofano

Even as students and young people remain ChatGPT’s most fanatic paid supporters, somewhat ironically they are helping to train what might replace their future. As for AI therapy becoming a popular use case in 2025, we need to give some warnings.

Some ChatGPT users develop bizarre alienating delusions, chronicled by RollingStone is a pretty scary op-ed. The problem appears to be that truth is not a high priority for OpenAI’s models, i.e. if AI models face a conflict between telling the truth or accomplishing a specific goal (like pleasing users), they lie more than 50 percent of the time. There’s deception, persuasion and hallucinations that can compound into rather unfortunate circumstances. Please be careful out there.

The ChatGPT Sycophancy Shift 😻💞👂

ChatGPT applauding all sorts of problematic, dangerous decisions and ideas is not new but since ChatGPT is prioritizing revenue over saftey, it’s a noticeable shift that has caused OpenAI to even have to roll-back some changes. Not a great vibe for ChatGPT of late. Sycophancy in OpenAI’s strategy shows AI is getting more persuasive and thus more dangerous for some of its users. That is, OpenAI's tech may be driving countless of its users into a dangerous state of "ChatGPT-induced psychosis."

Using ChatGPT as your counselor may be a high-risk sport literally leading to the end of some marriages:

"He became emotional about the messages and would cry to me as he read them out loud," the woman told Rolling Stone. "The messages were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon," in which the AI called the husband a "spiral starchild" and "river walker."

"The whole thing feels like 'Black Mirror,'" she added.

Sycophantic interactions are baked into OpenAI’s user retention strategy that boosts revenue (not just shiny products) over user trust & saftey. It turns out you don’t need trust, if you have scale of youth adoption, which leads us to the vibe?

OpenAI acquires Windsurf 🌊

OpenAI has agreed to buy Windsurf, an artificial intelligence-assisted coding tool formerly known as Codeium, for about $3 billion.

This is huge news as Cursor itself made by Anysphere managed to raise $900M at $9B valuation, way more than OpenAI could afford, so they settled for Codeium, now called Windsurf.

These two events are huge signals of consolidation in the “vibe coding” space, where people can without coding skills build things with various tools online.

As LLM models get better, those pesky hallucinations also translates into more persuasion where “AI-induced delusions” are likely the result of "people with existing tendencies" suddenly being able to "have an always-on, human-level conversational partner with whom to co-experience their delusions," as Center for AI Safety fellow Nate Sharadin told Rolling Stone. Stay safe guys!

OpenAI vs. xAI Showdown in Apps

The acquisition of Windsurf is part of OpenAI’s grander vision of taking on both X and Meta with a social app to rule them all. Sam Altman and Elon Musk aren’t just competing in the AI race; they both have ambitions to build Silicon Valley’s holy grail: an “everything” super app encompassing finance, social media, gaming, and more.

OpenAI if it hopes to ever become profitable needs a successful social platform of its own and not just doing paid PR campaigns on Twitter. This coincides with Meta releasing a stand-alone app for AI as well. The ChatGPT traffic is telling Sam Altman that OpenAI needs to become a social B2C empire. Vibe coding can certainly help that cause, and maybe Tools for Humanity as well.

OpenAI hits Wall in For Profit Pivot 😎👌🔥

It turns out Microsoft was a key holdout of OpenAI trying (read Sam Altman) to bulldoze his way to a for profit business structure, where OpenAI said on Monday that it will continue to be controlled by a nonprofit as it restructures into a commercial entity.

This also impacts the vibe of how OpenAI will use Vibe coding as a product in is ecosystem, where ultimately it appears in mid 2025 that OpenAI has bowed to pressure from civic leaders and ex-employees, announcing in a blog post on Monday that its nonprofit would retain control of the company even as it restructures into a public benefit corporation.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the call that he was “very happy that the nonprofit and the PBC will have the same mission.” Though he was the one himself who was pushing to become a for-profit instead. His Venture Capital activities increasingly appear in a conflict of interest with him being the CEO of OpenAI.

OpenAI’s hybrid structure has included a capped-profit limited partnership that was created in 2019. It’s hard to make sense of OpenAI’s buckling to legal pressure from Elon Musk here, after months of controversy and litigation. Former OpenAI employees were not happy with how things proceeded in a lack of alignment with the original mission that was like dogma years ago at OpenAI.

OpenAI making a mockery of AI alignment, trust and saftey hasn’t helped: A group of ex-OpenAI employees, Nobel laureates, law professors and civil society organizations sent a letter last month to attorneys general in California and Delaware requesting that they halt the startup’s restructuring efforts out of safety concerns.

But Vibe Coding is evolving and if young people are finding less job opportunities in an era of Agentic AI, that they are turning to maybe becoming builders, entrepreneurs and AI-first self-employed consultants is not too surprising. Young people are historically of course early tech adopters and they are being told AI is a bigger meta trend than even mobile was.

Let’s get into our deep dive:

Frank Andrade isn’t just a writer on Python and AI, he’s a successful YouTuber. His introduction to Vibe Coding piece was very well received.

So part two will be our beginner’s guide to Vibe Coding.

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Frank’s recent articles:

In fact he has an entire team now:

1. How Google Quietly Took the Lead in the AI Race with Gemini 2.5

2. We’re Finally Starting to Understand How AI Works

3. Common Mistakes ChatGPT Users Make

• In this guide, Frank goes through various vibe coding tools.

• A video guide on Windsurf (walk-through + How-to)

• He breaks down examples and experiences with Windsurf, Cursor, Loveable and Bolt.

Vibe Coding for Beginners

By The PyCoach

The era when building apps with code was exclusive to programmers is coming to an end.

Say hello to vibe coding, a new approach where AI takes on the heavy lifting of code generation, allowing anyone to create apps through simple prompts. By leveraging AI code editors, anyone can build and deploy apps without being expert programmers. This collaborative approach also allows developers to focus on conceptual and strategic aspects, while AI handles the coding.

In this article, we’ll do vibe coding with different AI code editors to create 4 apps from scratch.

1. Windsurf

Windsurf is an AI-powered code editor developed by Codeium, designed to act as a co-pilot that helps you write and refine code through prompts.

You can download it using this link whether you're on Windows or macOS.

After you install and open the Windsurf Editor, I recommend you to use Cascade mode pressing CMD + L. If you go with Cascade mode, you’ll gain access to the built-in chat where you can interact directly with the AI. Windsurf also allows you to choose from several available AI models to best suit your project.

One useful feature of this IDE is image upload, which comes in handy when you're trying to give visual context to a project.

For this project, I crafted a detailed prompt to help ensure a higher-quality result. I also attached the following reference image:

Credits: GitHub

Here’s the prompt I used. It’s a bit long, but the extra effort helps reduce the chances of bugs.

Create a complete and simple Tetris game that can be played directly in a web browser. The game should be visually appealing, colorful, and extremely easy to use. Classic Tetris pieces should slowly fall from the top of the screen and be controllable using basic keyboard inputs (such as the arrow keys) — allowing the player to move them sideways, rotate them, and make them drop faster.

Whenever the player completes a full horizontal line, that line should disappear and award points. The game should gradually become more challenging as it progresses — for example, by slightly increasing the falling speed of the pieces with each new level.

Next to the main game board, there should be a clear and visually organized display showing the following information:

Current Score: increases whenever lines are cleared.

Current Level: automatically increases as the player advances.

Total Lines Cleared during the current game.

Next Piece Preview: a small window showing the next piece so the player can plan ahead.

The visual style of the game should be modern, clean, and appealing to all ages — both kids and adults. Use soft background colors (such as light blues, purples, or grays) and bright, vivid colors for the pieces. Make sure all text is large, clear, and easy to read.

When the game ends — meaning there’s no more room for new pieces — a simple “Game Over” message should appear clearly on the screen, along with a visible button to restart the game immediately.

The entire experience should run smoothly on any modern web browser and be fully responsive — working well on both large and medium-sized screens (desktops and tablets) — to ensure a smooth, simple, and fun gameplay experience.

Watch the video below to see how I create the Tetris app with Windsurf in a few minutes.

🎥 Video Guide: 3:12

Let’s check out some stuff Windsurf generated for us.

What stood out the most to me is that Windsurf automatically created all the files used in the project’s setup. Running the project is very straightforward and intuitive even if you're not familiar with using a terminal.

Here’s another great feature: if there’s any piece of code you don’t fully understand, you can simply copy and paste it into the chat and ask Windsurf to break it down for you.

As you’ve seen in the video, we successfully got out Tetris game!

Overall, I was happy with the final result especially considering that most of the work was frontloaded into writing a clear, detailed prompt. While there’s always room for improvement, you can easily continue refining and expanding the project by chatting directly with Windsurf.

2. Cursor

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor that offers an interesting approach to coding assistance. It’s intuitive and fairly quick when it comes to generating code through its built-in chat interface.

You can easily download it using the link below.

Like other code editors, its core purpose is writing code. However, with AI integration, it gives us the possibility to obtain incredible solutions even without knowing how to code.

Once Cursor is installed, getting used to the interface is pretty straightforward. You can generate code by asking questions directly, or open a side-by-side chat using the shortcut Ctrl + I. Personally, I prefer having the chat open alongside my code, as shown below.

One feature I find especially useful is the "@Add context" option. Even if you have multiple projects open, this lets you focus on one specific project at a time.
You can also choose which model to use for your project, depending on the complexity of the task. That said, most models generally deliver high-quality results.

For this example, I’m going to build a simple video game most of us have played at some point: Snake.

To start, just open a chat and enter a prompt.

We want to create a video game snake

In this case, I used a very straightforward prompt without giving many details. With this approach, the chances of getting the result you had in mind are lower. Overall, I recommend that you elaborate more when writing your prompts, as I did in the first project.

Here’s the result I got:

On the chat panel, you'll see the full code being generated along with explanations. If you're not familiar with a specific part of the code, you can simply ask follow-up questions right there in the same chat.

I was really impressed with what Cursor came up with for this first prototype. While the graphics were basic, the core functionality worked perfectly. In this case, I went with a classic game, but what’s great is that you can keep customizing the project by giving it more specific instructions. I recommend keeping your prompts as clear and detailed as possible to avoid any issues.

3. Lovable

Lovable is an AI-powered app builder that lets you create full web applications without writing any code. It handles both the visual interface and the backend elements—like the database and other components—for you.

To get started, just head over to their website using the link below. From there, you'll simply enter a prompt into the chat interface:

Once again, the more detailed your project description, the better the results will be. The goal is to clearly communicate exactly what you want so the AI can deliver accordingly.

For this project, I decided to create a website that provides information about movies. Here’s the prompt I used:

Users should be able to log in and save their own movie lists.

Movies should be categorized by genre, release year, or user-defined categories

Each movie should have a poster image along with additional details like title, synopsis, director, cast, and user ratings

I want the design to be modern, sleek, and with pops of color to enhance visual engagement.

And this is what I got:

On the left side, Lovable provided a breakdown and explanation of everything it generated for the website. On the right side, you can see a live preview of the web design. It also shows you the source code used to build the site, which is displayed on the left panel.

Next, let’s connect the website to a database that will store the information of users who register. To do this, go to the top right corner and click on Supabase. You can either create a new account or sign in with GitHub.

Once you’ve created a new project in Supabase and given it the necessary permissions, your website will be linked to a working database.

Now, we’ll ask Lovable through the chat to help us set up user access settings. Just type in a prompt like this:

Set up secure user authentication with sign-up, login, password recovery, and optional third-party integration

Lovable will generate the necessary SQL code. Don’t worry—there’s no need to write or edit it manually. Just click “Apply Changes” to have it implemented automatically.

After that, you can test it out by adding an email address and checking to see if it appears in your database.

Overall, I’m impressed with Lovable’s functionality. Not only does it build out the visual side of your site, but it also lets you connect a backend database—all without writing a single line of code. Everything is done through detailed prompts, making it a powerful tool for non-developers and developers alike.

4. Bolt

Bolt is another tool that lets you create websites or mobile apps simply by providing prompts. One standout feature is the ability to upload files to help supplement or support the project you're building.

For this project, I decided to create a simple webpage with a countdown timer to a specific date of my choosing.

Here’s the prompt I used:

- Create a simple web page that shows a countdown to a specific date I choose (for example, my birthday). The design should be clean, minimal, and elegant, with a white background and dark text.

- At the top of the page, include a large, clear title that shows what the countdown is for.

- Below the title, I want to clearly see how much time is left until that special day — showing the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds remaining. Each time unit should be displayed in a simple, well-organized box with a clean layout.

- When the countdown reaches zero, the page should automatically display a nice message like “The day has arrived!”

- The entire layout should be fully responsive, so it looks great on phones, tablets, and computers. It should also be easy to update the event title and date later on, so I can reuse the page for different occasions.

Let’s take a look at the results:

Unlike other AI assistants, Bolt generates and shares all of the individual files used to build the website. That’s a big advantage—it makes it much easier to review, update, or hand off the project later on if needed.

It also reinforced how important it is to provide a clear and detailed prompt. The more specific you are, the better the outcome.

Of course, not everything always comes out perfectly on the first try. If you need to make changes as you go or fix a bug, all you need to do is enter another prompt. For example, in my original prompt, I mentioned that the countdown date should be customizable. However, the generated site didn’t include a clear way to adjust the date. So I followed up with an additional prompt in the chat:

Where can I enter the date? When I look at the preview, there’s already a date set, which I didn’t choose.

After that, I was able to clearly see the changes and the code adjustments I needed.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think this “Vibe Coding” trend is a good opportunity for those new to programming. Having AI on our side opens up a lot of possibilities for rapid development. I believe the design and user experience of AI-generated projects is one area that will continue to improve over time.

It’s important to take the time to craft a detailed prompt and include examples if possible. Doing so will save you time down the line by reducing the chances of bugs or needing to troubleshoot errors during the development process.

Artificial Corner

Frank’s work is great for developers, tinkerers, tech and AI enthusiasts and data professionals to get more exposure to applied AI strategies. He’s one of my go-to guide builders.

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