Unpacking the Future of Vibe Coding

Interviewer: Nice to meet you! Thanks for taking the time. So, you're involved in vibe coding, right? Could you start by telling me more about your background and how you got into this space?

Sure. I joined a vibe coding tool around late October, early November—right during its transition from GPT Engineer to Lovable. I worked on both the 1.0 and 2.0 launches and still contribute actively. I'm not a developer myself, but I use Lovable daily and collaborate closely with the team. That gives me a unique perspective, especially from a non-dev angle.

Interviewer: Got it. And what’s the history of vibe coding? How did it all start?

In the beginning, there were four key players: Replit, V0, Lovable, and Bolt. These tools emerged as LLMs improved at coding, enabling more people to build software. Now there are about 70 to 80 tools in this space, with even larger players like Figma, Wix, Airtable, and Notion jumping in. The core idea is to let anyone, regardless of technical background, build apps.

Interviewer: Who are the main users of vibe coding platforms?

There are a few personas:

1. Developers: Especially frontend or backend specialists who don’t enjoy the other side. A vibe coding tool lets them prototype fast. Once their MVP is decent—what I call an "MVP++"—they often switch to tools like Cursor for better debugging and context awareness.
2. Product Managers: They’re technical, often good at design, and excellent at prompting. They understand how to read code and describe exactly what they want, making them highly successful users.
3. Founders / Indie Hackers / Side Hustlers: They know what they want to build and want quick MVPs. These are often users who previously built ecommerce or dropshipping sites.
4. Non-Devs: They struggle the most. A vibe coding tool aims to empower them, but due to poor understanding of code, API logic, front/backend separation, and prompting, their success rate is low.

Interviewer: Interesting. Tell me more about MVP++.

It’s more than a prototype. It’s a fully working, beautiful front-end, often with logins, Stripe integration, connected APIs—basically a functional app that can be used to raise funding or test traction.

Interviewer: Is there a typical workflow or difference in how people build?

Yes. Some people do front-end only, then plug in the backend. Others start with both in parallel—front-end login UI plus backend logic right away. The second method has more success because you're validating features end-to-end as you go.

Interviewer: You mentioned Cursor—how does that compare?

Cursor is much closer to VSCode. It’s focused on AI-assisted coding, debugging, and productivity. It's for people who want to move fast with context-aware help. It's not a builder tool like Lovable, but it's complementary.

Interviewer: What’s the real impact of vibe coding then?

Productivity. It massively speeds up development. Instead of writing 1000 lines of code, you prompt and generate it. But LLMs still hallucinate, have context limitations, and can’t manage large codebases. So devs aren’t scared of losing their jobs—yet.

Interviewer: Are developers being replaced?

No, but the role is evolving. You're getting more “Product Architects”—people who know what to build, write a PRD, talk to users, and use vibe coding tools to build MVP++. These aren’t necessarily traditional devs, but they understand enough to create working products.

Interviewer: What are the top complaints?

1. Security: Many apps are publicly visible on GitHub. API keys exposed. Vulnerable setups.
2. SEO: Hard to rank apps built with React or Jamstack.
3. AI Frustration: You prompt something, but AI misunderstands or produces buggy code.
4. Prompting Skill: Users think they’re good at prompting, but most aren’t. It’s a new form of literacy.
5. Pricing: Very addictive model. Credits don’t roll over. Users either upgrade constantly or churn. Pricing models are shifting to solve this.

Interviewer: Any data on churn?

Yes. Churn is brutal—around 70-80%. Retention is only ~20%. Only a small slice of users use these tools regularly. Most bounce after 1 month. Even OpenAI tools see similar churn. Everyone hops around.

Interviewer: What are the most common things people build?

1. Landing pages. 2. To-do apps. 3. CRMs. 4. Games like Snake or Tetris. 5. Marketplaces. 6. Dashboards—data scientists love these for presenting reports. All basic stuff that can be built with prompts or even raw LLMs.

Interviewer: Are companies trying to fix retention or doubling down on B2B?

It’s survival mode. Lots of tools fighting for the same users. No one’s cracked B2B yet, but some like Lovable are on the right path—targeting internal tools for enterprises. Klarna already switched its internal tool dev to vibe coders. Still, it’s a hard sell competing with giants like Figma, Webflow, Airtable.

Interviewer: What’s your prediction for the space?

Consolidation. Big tools will buy smaller ones. Smaller YC-style tools will merge to survive. LLM makers like Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral are releasing their own vibe coding UIs—Canvas, Artifacts, DeepSite. 90% of current vibe tools run on these models anyway. They’ll eat the ecosystem.

Interviewer: Where does human-AI collaboration go from here?

Vibe coding tools added chat and agent modes to keep users in-platform. Chat is for brainstorming. Agents analyze code, logs, and help debug. But context is limited—they only read a few files. Future agents need full context access and better file selection logic.

Interviewer: So what’s the human’s role in all this?

Expertise. Developers will guide AI: which files to load, what APIs to use, how to structure the system prompt. Eventually, users will bring their own system prompts, knowledge bases, tools. A vibe coding tool just becomes the UI layer.

Interviewer: And what about non-technical users?

They’ll rely on defaults—less prompting skill, less awareness. It’ll be point-and-click or prompt-and-pray. For them, human-AI interaction will feel like issuing orders, not collaborating. But their understanding of what's happening will be shallow.

Interviewer: What about automation tools?

Massive growth potential. N8N, Make, and others will become central. Devs will use Lovable for frontends and automation platforms for backend logic. Agents will plug into this. You’ll see multi-agent systems like Emergent—each agent specialized and collaborating. That’s the future.

Interviewer: Any tools to check out?

Interviewee: Emergent, DataButton, HeyBoss—all agent-first tools pushing boundaries. They're competitive with vibe coding tools but focus heavily on orchestrating multiple agents to build complex workflows.

Interviewer: This is incredibly insightful. Thank you so much!