Vibe engineering

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/vibe-engineering/

• what should we call the other end of the spectrum, where seasoned professionals accelerate their work with LLMs while staying proudly and confidently accountable for the software they produce?

• I propose we call this vibe engineering, with my tongue only partially in my cheek.

• I’m increasingly hearing from experienced, credible software engineers who are running multiple copies of agents at once, tackling several problems in parallel and expanding the scope of what they can take on. I was skeptical of this at first but I’ve started running multiple agents myself now and it’s surprisingly effective, if mentally exhausting!

• If you’re going to really exploit the capabilities of these new tools, you need to be operating at the top of your game. You’re not just responsible for writing the code—you’re researching approaches, deciding on high-level architecture, writing specifications, defining success criteria, designing agentic loops, planning QA, managing a growing army of weird digital interns who will absolutely cheat if you give them a chance, and spending so much time on code review.

• Vibe engineering establishes a clear distinction from vibe coding. It signals that this is a different, harder and more sophisticated way of working with AI tools to build production software.