Vibe Coding 101 for Beginners: From Idea to App in Minutes
Ranking the Top 3 Vibe-Coding Tools: Your Step‑by‑Step Guide to Understanding the Basics & Choosing the Right One for You
Vibe coding has recently become all the rage, with almost every tech startup and VC discussing it and considering its impact on the startup ecosystem.
I will admit that it did take me quite a bit of time to sift through the jargon and really understand what vibe coding was and how it impacted me. In fact, I only really started taking it seriously when a friend in the non-profit space brought it up, sharing how they were using it internally to build software and systems that would have otherwise cost them a fortune.
"Almost everything can be built with vibe coding", she said. "I've even been using it to build a personal project that I would have never have otherwise started. Now I've got a full-blown prototype ready".
So, regardless of whether you're a startup founder, someone working in corporate or the non-profit space, or just someone who wants to see their own ideas become a reality, understanding vibe coding is more important than ever. I've personally spent the last couple of months exploring various vibe coding tools, tinkering with projects, and trying to understand this emergent space.
With that, I decided to write out some of my findings in this article as an introduction for anyone who wants to learn more about vibe coding. I'll be:
Breaking down the main vibe coding tools that you've probably heard about in the news
Ranking them in order of which is the most accessible to beginners
Providing recommendations on where to start for people with different levels of expertise.
So… What is Vibe Coding?
Vibe coding lets you build software simply by describing what you want—in plain English - rather than writing code yourself. Coined by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025, it’s essentially “coding with vibes,” meaning your natural-language prompts guide the AI, which performs the actual coding.
The way that I think about it is like how you would use ChatGPT to write an email. You’d give it a prompt, it’ll generate a response, you respond with feedback, and the cycle of iteration continues until you’re satisfied. Vibe coding is similar; you prompt, receive an initial draft, and then keep iterating until you get what you want. Instead of a finalized email, your output is the finalized app, platform, or system that you desired.
Why it matters:
Y Combinator’s recent cohort saw 25% of its startups had codebases that were 95% AI-generated, showing us how leading VCs are beginning to think about vibe coding.
I was recently having a conversation with another friend of mine who is graduating with a CS degree soon and had not explored vibe coding himself. Our conversation centered on an upcoming project we were working on, which required some technical expertise. As we were chatting, I brought up some of these tools and showed him some past side projects I had been working on with them. His response?
"Well, there goes the 4 years I spent on this degree".
It’s important to note that the founders in the Y-Combinator example are still highly technical, so I’m not too worried about my friend’s job prospects (and personally as a startup founder, it’s nice to able to read and understand the code that’s going into our platforms and not having to worry it will crash). However, if you think about it, experts who know how to leverage these tools just get the added bonus of having some additional time saved, while beginners with big dreams have the tools to at least take the first step of building something.
Not all Vibe Coding Tools are Built Equal
Sorry, folks, there isn’t just one definition of what vibe coding is. The phrase refers to multiple ways people engage with AI to code and build things.
Instead, vibe coding tools exist on a spectrum. On one side, you've got tools like Lovable: you say what you want, it builds the prototype, and you tweak it. At the other end, there’s agentic coding where tools like Claude Code or Manus AI listen to a single goal, plan out the work, edit files, run tests, commit changes, and even deploy, mostly on their own. You step in only to supervise. Between those endpoints lies an entire range of workflows, each blending different levels of control, automation, and technical smarts.
Below is my suggested ranking, in order of technical expertise needed, of tools you can use to get started based on your own proficiency in coding:
1. Lovable
Lovable is what I think most non-coders think of when they hear the word “vibe coding”. It’s easily the most accessible if you have no prior coding experience and want to see any idea turned into reality in a quick, visual manner that you can interact with.
You just type in what your app should do, and Lovable builds it. For example, you might say, “I want a blog with login, comments, and a dashboard,” and it creates a full-stack app on the spot: frontend UI, backend logic, database, and even sets up GitHub deployment automatically.
Even if you don’t know what the terms “frontend” or “database” mean, just describe your idea. If you want to make a change, you respond to the AI agent again (e.g., “change the button color to blue” or “add an email field”), and it updates the code live.
Skill needed: None to minimal
Best for: People with ideas but zero coding experience who just want to see their concepts come alive.
Personal note: I love how it was a browser-based tool (so you don’t have to download anything onto your laptop), however, I personally felt that their free trial credits were somewhat limited and didn’t get me to a place where I could fully see the extent it its capabilities
2. Replit
Replit’s agent is another awesome tool for beginners who want to have an AI agent do most of the heavy lifting. Similar to Lovable, you can open a chat, describe your app (“Make a to-do app with React and persisted storage”), and it builds the project, installs dependencies, spins up servers, runs tests, and even deploys for you. You can follow up with commands like “Add a filter feature” or “Connect to a database,” and it iterates live.
The main difference between Lovable and Replit, to me, is that Replit allows you to glimpse under the hood a little more and see what is the code it’s writting. You have access to adjust the code manually (if you want), compared to Lovable, where you don’t get to actively spy on the code that it’s writing.
Skill needed: Minimal
Best for: Beginners who want a fast path from idea to deployed prototype without touching local tools, but still have basic technical knowledge and want to see what the agent is doing in real time.
Personal note: I personally like Replit because I feel like I still get to see the logical steps taken towards making something, and course-correct it. However, it does help to have some coding or technical background if that’s your goal, even if it’s just to understand the basic terms it uses.
3. Cursor
Cursor is definitely one of the more popular vibe coding platforms and is probably the platform that most of you have heard of. You prompt it in plain English, “create a login page” or “optimize this function”, and it writes or refactors code inline.
It’s important to note that it doesn’t build the full app or system for you. Cursor excels at generating and modifying code within your existing project, but it doesn't handle full app scaffolding or deployment on its own.
You can highlight code and ask for improvements, explanations, or bug fixes. You’re encouraged to edit, test, and tinker alongside the AI, growing your understanding. It supports multi-file coordination and keeps context across your project, so it feels more like an “assistant” instead of having AI build the entire system for you.
Skill needed: Intermediate
Best for: Learners ready to take control and guide the AI, but step in with your own edits and tests.
Personal note: You’re going to need to know some coding before using Cursor. Unlike the earlier platforms, Cursor requires prior technical knowledge and serves as a helper to assist. Great if you’re trying to learn to code!
BONUS: ChatGPT for Code?
ChatGPT is probably the AI tool with which most people are most familiar. However, it doesn’t help with end-to-end creation and deployment* when you want to build something from scratch.
ChatGPT is great for on-demand coding. If you need help writing a specific piece of code, it can create a simple and easy string of HTML (or your coding language of choice). You type requests like “write a sorting function in Python” or “fix this loop bug,” it generates code, then you copy-paste it into your editor to run and debug. Unfortunately, as mentioned, you will still need other tools to turn code from ChatGPT into a functioning app or site.
For simple projects, you can try to ask for prompts like “Build me a simple website,” but after generating the code, you will need to figure out how to deploy it yourself. You can preview what your output can look like within chat, but you can’t deploy it directly.
Skill needed: Entry to intermediate
Best for: Beginners (who just want a few lines of code independently) or Intermediate (if you just need help with the code and can handle all aspects of deployment and integrations in a separate tool).
Personal note: I personally recommend it to friends with no technical knowledge who are looking for one-off pieces of code for larger projects. If you need just 1 or 2 lines of code for a custom CSS or HTML section in another tool, it’s worth using ChatGPT. It also serves as a great learning platform for those who want to focus solely on learning code.
*It’s worth noting for beginners that the word “deploy” basically means to release your app to the public. Your version might work on your computer, but deployment makes it real (and available to others). It involves bundling your code, configuring it on a server or cloud setup, testing it, and launching it so people can actually use it.
Other Vibe Coding Tools
As I said, vibe coding exists on a continuum, so there are more complex tools available too. I wanted to focus this article on the tools available for beginners who want to explore vibe coding. That said, there are more powerful platforms aimed at experienced developers. Claude Code and Manus AI are two that stand out for those who can read, write, and understand code themselves, with, of course, a range of other tools available.
What You Should Be Worried About
Even though vibe coding lets you build apps lightning-fast, it does come with its own slate of concerns and risks. The few that I think most people should be aware of are:
Security issues: AI-generated code often lacks proper input validation, sanitation, or encryption. AI often overlooks critical gaps that leave code vulnerable to hackers.
Scalability problem: GitHub’s CEO warns that non-technical founders relying too much on vibe coding will eventually hit a wall when systems get too complex to maintain or scale. Similarly, some vibe coding platforms leave you contingent on their servers and infrastructure, leaving you tied to them in the long run.
The infamous black-box dilemma: Code you didn’t write is harder to debug and adapt, so without a solid understanding of what’s under the hood, it can be hard to understand how they actually work or how to fix them when things break down.
I still think that it’s important to learn about vibe coding, at the very least, to understand how the startup ecosystem thinks about coding and building. It’s also an excellent tool for both dreamers and doers: it helps non-technical people create a bare-bones prototype of concepts they like, while it provides coders with tools to make their work go faster.
If this article was helpful…
Let me know in the comments if you’d like to learn more about vibe coding or other AI tools that are dominating the news or could make your life easier.
Would you like a part 2 of this article?
Or other useful tips for those who would like to start dabbling in vibe coding?
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A Personal Update…
If you’re a high schooler who wants to learn more about vibe coding and what you can do with it. This is for you!
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