Introduction

Vibe Coding is opening the magical world of AI to ordinary people, allowing everyone from retirees to elementary school students to easily step into programming. This trend has not only led to successful entrepreneurs but also sparked deep reflections on the disappearance of technical barriers and the reshaping of creative value. This article reveals how this programming revolution is reconstructing career paths and business logic, along with the real challenges hidden behind the excitement.

In the world of Vibe Coding, ordinary people can feel like they are attending an AI version of Hogwarts. The difference is that the barriers are low enough—one of my friends showcased a “cat paw mouse” game created by his second-grade child using Vibe Coding. More and more AI bloggers are emerging on social media platforms, with Vibe Coding experience sharing becoming a popular topic.

This is an era where taxi drivers, retirees, and elementary school students are discussing AI, and Vibe Coding provides the most immediate sense of achievement. Coined by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in 2025, Vibe Coding, translated as “氛围编程” in Chinese, allows people to develop applications while almost forgetting that code exists. It has been recognized as a buzzword for 2025 by the Collins English Dictionary and has sparked a global wave of interest in Vibe Coding.

We have recorded stories from several ordinary people using Vibe Coding. Their levels of engagement vary, as do their expectations and gains, but they all share a belief: AI will bring about a new world order, and they cannot afford to miss out.

From Entrepreneurs to Ordinary People

A post-2000s student, Xiao Shi, along with two post-1995 friends, Xitang and Yangyang, founded an AI video technology company called “Xiyangshi.” Xiao Shi is the technical core but hasn’t handwritten code in over a year.

Vibe Coding has taken over that part of the work. From front-end design to interaction and back-end code, Xiao Shi handles everything using Vibe Coding, spending only over 1,000 yuan each month.

This is not an isolated case. There are already instances abroad of workers developing 2D robot battle games and an 8-year-old girl using Cursor. Many post-2000 digital nomads, data analysts, and UI designers on social media are heavy users of Vibe Coding. The recent popularity of OpenClaw has truly broken the boundaries of Vibe Coding.

Xiao Shi’s AI journey began during the ChatGPT era in 2023. At that time, he had just graduated with a degree in materials science and was already using ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 to write code and improve work efficiency. After starting his business in 2024, the general AI video tools on the market cost tens or even hundreds of thousands, which was unaffordable for a startup with a five-digit account balance. Fortunately, he could spend a few thousand to hire an outsourcing architect to solve problems using Vibe Coding.

For Xiao Shi, the cost reduction and efficiency increase brought by AI are evident. Before the rise of Vibe Coding, AI programming software like Cursor, Kiro, and Augment emerged one after another, followed by even better tools like Antigravity, Claude Code, and Gemini 3. Domestic tools like Miaoda, Coze, and Qoder have also captured part of the user demand, making AI programming a new trend.

Miaoda’s official application square

Large companies are no exception.

Baidu currently generates 52% of its new code through AI, with CEO Robin Li expecting that number to reach 80% or even 90%. The 2025 Tencent R&D Big Data Report also shows that AI has been fully integrated into Tencent’s R&D system, with over 90% of Tencent engineers using the AI programming assistant CodeBuddy, and 50% of new code generated with AI assistance.

Unlike previous waves of AI hype that rose and fell in the tech circle, this time, more end users are perceiving and joining the new world brought by AI.

Xiao K, a post-80s individual, just “retired” last October and dove into the world of Vibe Coding in November. She is a liberal arts graduate but has worked in tech companies for ten years, familiar with big data, cloud computing, and large language models, making her relatively sensitive to AI. Previously, she used ChatGPT and DeepSeek at work, but compared to that, the experience brought by Vibe Coding was shocking.

Due to high living expenses, Xiao K had many confusing accounts, and existing accounting software could not accurately meet her needs. After Vibe Coding gained popularity, she used Miaoda to create a small accounting program entirely through natural language, completing it in just one day. When bugs appeared, she could resolve them by asking AI.

This opened a new world for her. Soon, she used Coze to create a card program named “True Vision Eye,” similar to tarot cards, and designed the card game’s visuals and card faces using Lovart—her costs included a year’s Lovart membership for 2,000 yuan and a Volcano Engine membership for 99 yuan.

More enthusiasts of Vibe Coding have shared their experiences online.

“The feeling of coding by voice is amazing; I feel like a leader, directing my subordinates to work.”

“The most interesting part is turning my ideas into reality. My coding time is when I am most focused and easily enter a flow state.”

“I feel like I found the joy I had as a child when I saw a good book and the bookstore was closing.”

Of course, there have always been doubts about the practical value of Vibe Coding. Andrew Ng mentioned in an August 2025 interview that the term Vibe Coding might lead people to think they just need to follow their feelings and accept all suggestions from Cursor. However, Vibe Coding is more like a high-intensity mental activity; a whole day of AI coding can actually leave one mentally exhausted. Ultimately, it is still engineering, just completed at a faster pace.

The advancement of AI technology will continue to improve the efficiency of Vibe Coding while lowering its usage threshold. This requires a process.

Some have already sensed business opportunities.

Wealth Disparity

Dongfang Qing, a junior student from a non-prestigious university, recently achieved a monthly income of 90,000 yuan through Vibe Coding.

However, he did not achieve this through technical skills but rather through information disparity. He began exploring AI-assisted development tools like Cursor, Figma, Augment, and Trae in 2024, gradually becoming indispensable at a small company where he interned. Later, he discovered that Google offers discounts for students, allowing him to use tools like Antigravity, Augment, and Claude Code for just a few dozen yuan. Thus, he opened a store on Xianyu, “sharing” his account.

Selling shared Antigravity accounts on Xianyu

He quickly realized how strong the desire of end users to learn and use AI tools was. On the first day of launching his “seafood market,” he earned over 2,000 yuan, and his daily sales have remained above 3,000 yuan. Now, he has accumulated over 600 clients. Thus, a junior intern earning 2,000 yuan a month has become the owner of a thriving “seafood market” store.

“How individuals can earn a stable and decent income over 10,000 yuan through Vibe Coding”—similar posts are everywhere in communities like Xiaohongshu. However, from the feedback in the comments, it seems that only a few have truly made money.

Left Xuesheng, with seven years of solid technical experience, has a web front-end job in Beijing earning 20,000 yuan a month. Through Vibe Coding, he has created small programs like a Zhihu sign-in reminder and a vocabulary memorization tool, but after several months, his side income has only been a few thousand yuan, which is not worth the time he invested in Vibe Coding: waking up at five or six in the morning to study technology and continuing to research for over three hours after putting his child to bed at eight.

His biggest bug is a lack of operational capability. He even envies the recently popular app “Is It Dead?” which has no technical barriers but wins through traffic strategies.

“Is It Dead?” app page

In addition, aesthetics are also an issue. From front-end pages to PPT design, his work has faced criticism from various individuals regarding aesthetics. This has, to some extent, become a counterexample. After this wave of AI explosion, many founders and investors in Silicon Valley have been discussing taste. As AI technology evolves rapidly, taste has become a filter. It is a unique product of various factors and cannot be completed through brute aesthetics. As Yang Zhenning once said:

“In every field of creative activity, a person’s taste, combined with their ability, temperament, and opportunities, determines their style, which in turn determines their contributions.”

Xiao Shi’s company is located in Shenzhen and currently focuses on three main areas: producing promotional videos for G-end, AI comic series for B-end, and online training for C-end, with a business ratio of 2:3:5 and an annual revenue of around 2 million yuan.

AI is a windfall they all agree upon. In fact, Xiao Shi has already benefited from the windfall; during his junior year, he learned programming through Bilibili and additional courses, eventually becoming one of the successful individuals in the “code transition” wave, leaving behind the arduous materials major to find a programming job earning over 10,000 yuan in Shenzhen, laying the foundation for his later entrepreneurship. Now, AI is bringing new hope to this group of young people. Xiao Shi plans to develop products using Vibe Coding and attempt a paid model.

Paid courses related to Vibe Coding on video platforms

Finding hope in AI is not exclusive to young people.

Middle-aged Xiao K has not considered AI entrepreneurship; she is more focused on enjoying the sense of achievement brought by Vibe Coding and the security of living in the wave. She hasn’t even set a time limit for monetization. Having benefited from the internet entrepreneurship wave, she owns properties in Beijing and Shenzhen. Recently, she sold her Shenzhen property, allowing her to relax for a long time and explore slowly. Researching AI is an important part of that.

She clearly recognizes that the brand marketing industry she was originally in will eventually be replaced by AI: “If I continue working now, it would be like being a toll collector in the ETC era.”

With the rise of Vibe Coding, technical backgrounds in the AI industry have become less important—just like Hogwarts accepting children from “Muggle” families.

Some believe that technical backgrounds are becoming a liability in the AI era. Lazar, the first professional Vibe Coding programmer hired by the Silicon Valley star company Lovable, does not know how to code at all. Because he cannot write code, he is not limited by any technical constraints and has gone further. For example, when someone at Lovable wanted to create a Chrome extension, technical staff immediately opposed it, claiming it was too difficult to implement architecturally, but Lazar typed the command in the dialogue box, and it was done.

This has given more liberal arts graduates like Xiao K hope.

The Rise of the “One-Person Company”?

The popularity of Vibe Coding is seen as a boon for “one-person companies.”

An enticing story is that in early 2025, 90s programmer Maor Shlomo founded Base44 Vibe Coding company alone in Israel, achieving a net profit of $189,000 by May 2025, and was acquired by the overseas internet giant Wix for $80 million just six months after its establishment. The “one-person unicorn” has become a reality.

Maor Shlomo

However, the risks of entrepreneurship are far greater than most people imagine. “One-person companies” sound appealing, especially with the AI boom, making them more attractive to young people. In reality, media investigations have found that many one-person company entrepreneurs are using the same tool stack: Claude for coding, Gemini for front-end, GPT for content, Notion for project management, and n8n for process automation. Amidst this homogeneity, entrepreneurship must return to the fundamentals: establishing one’s own moat.

Some have expressed the sobering thought that writing code is the simplest step in the entrepreneurial process. Don’t think that mastering it means you can start a company.

Dongfang Qing, who earns 90,000 yuan a month, has already experienced the troubles of running a “one-person company.” With insufficient manpower, customer service has consumed almost all of his time. “Many people seem to have never touched a computer before,” he said. Despite preparing a detailed document on account usage, he still receives daily requests for remote video teaching, which frustrates him. “I really don’t have time to teach one-on-one via video; I can only repeatedly remind them to check the document, which has everything.”

Additionally, there are always freeloaders who buy and then want to return. Dongfang Qing directly tells them, “Returns are fine, but you leave it alone, and I’ll change the account password.” They often take the hint and decide not to return it. They still want the account.

Vibe Coding has brought him his first bucket of gold and helped him overcome his gaming addiction. “When you make a lot of money, you simply don’t want to waste time gaming anymore.”

However, he has decided to look for a job after graduation, with low expectations—just over 10,000 yuan a month will suffice. He is also working hard to enhance his AI skills, as that is the foundation for his career; making money through information disparity is not a long-term strategy. The incident that made him give up on the idea of a “one-person company” was when his “seafood market” account was banned due to certain operations, abruptly ending his 90,000 yuan monthly income. He is now adjusting to find new AI monetization methods but fundamentally wants to return to the technology itself to secure a job and later use Vibe Coding for side projects.

Left Xuesheng, who is stuck in only knowing how to do technical work, has a more positive attitude towards the “one-person company”—though it’s hard to say whether this is proactive or passive. He is over 30. If he gets laid off one day, he plans to start a “one-person company,” bringing on two or three part-timers to take on projects and create AI-related content.

This vision has, to some extent, already been realized by Xiao K. Recently, she registered a personal company, leading a few outsourced designers and occasionally taking on projects.

Previously, in the workplace, she was always in high-intensity mode, carrying her computer everywhere, leaving her physically and mentally exhausted after over a decade. After switching modes, she now wakes up at 8 AM, spends the morning with her pets, and starts researching AI and handling work around 2 PM, “without anyone behind me cracking a whip or dangling carrots in front of me, which gives me more motivation.”

Entrepreneur Xiao Shi spent some time in the hospital in August 2025 due to frequent late nights and anxiety, compounded by sudden fitness efforts leading to rhabdomyolysis. He took two weeks to recuperate and finally had time to watch a movie he liked. He found that the company continued to operate smoothly because they had already established a complete workflow using AI.

In the AI entrepreneurial race, Xiao Shi sees more clearly the changes Vibe Coding brings to ordinary people.

In his AI breakthrough club, liberal arts students often reach the level of ordinary programmers within a month. He is frequently “surprised” by his students. A sophomore named Baozi has already earned several thousand yuan through AI videos—though such students are still in the minority.

Netizens sharing their AI earning experiences on social media

Moreover, even if everyone can code, creativity, business insight, and resource integration skills remain scarce. Therefore, Xiyangshi’s training programs include not just AI video production but also project co-creation and business resources, generally pointing towards the development direction of “one-person companies.” However, feedback from students suggests that they seem more interested in making pocket money through AI. It’s hard to say whether this practicality belongs to the city of Shenzhen or to this generation embracing AI.

Overall, those pursuing AI are very busy. Many of the Vibe Coding enthusiasts we contacted were still sharing technical insights at two or three in the morning.

Diving into the AI field, it seems no one dares to slow down easily, as the “disruption” in AI comes in waves. The pace of industry change is indeed rapid. You can choose to ride in a horse-drawn carriage, but you cannot change the arrival of the steam era; the same goes for the AI era.