Vibe Coding & Designing
Emerging skills for future creative and technical fields
By Julian Scaff
In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and automation, it’s easy to think the future of work lies solely in logic, data, and productivity. But there’s another current flowing beneath the surface — one rooted in emotion, expression, and intuition. As generative AI matures, it isn’t just replacing tasks; it’s giving rise to a new creative superpower: Vibe-Making. This is not a job title but a job skill — a way of working that centers on sensing, sculpting, and sustaining a vibe using intelligent tools.
“We can all be the best versions of ourselves and lift one another up by coming together and spreading positive vibes.” ~ Skip Marley
The Roots: Vibe Coding and Vibe Designing
We begin with two emergent practices to understand AI-Vibing: Vibe Coding and Vibe Designing.
Vibe Coding happens when software development becomes an intuitive, expressive flow. It’s not about rigorous architecture or technical purity — it’s about building things that feel right. Developers might improvise, prototype rapidly, and collaborate in a state of creative sync. The code may be temporary, messy, or even poetic. It serves the energy of the moment. Think of creative technologists using p5.js to make generative art or indie game devs scripting emotional scenes in Unity — this is coding as moodcraft.
Vibe Designing pushes UX and visual design beyond function into feeling. Here, aesthetics aren’t afterthoughts — they are the experience. A designer might choose a color palette, motion gesture, or micro interaction not because it tests well but because it evokes a precise emotional register. Whether it’s the cozy warmth of a meditation app or the playful tension of a sci-fi dashboard, Vibe Designing is about making digital environments that resonate, not just work.
Together, these disciplines mark a profound shift in how we think about digital creation — not merely as functional systems but as emotional experiences. We are moving from the interface — where design is a surface for interaction — to the atmosphere, where design becomes a medium for immersion, tone, and mood. From logic, the backbone of computation, we are shifting toward aura, the ineffable quality that gives something its presence and emotional gravity.
Walter Benjamin defined aura in a work of art as its unique presence in time and space — an unrepeatable essence that evokes authenticity, history, and emotional distance, which he argued was diminished through mechanical reproduction. In his famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he wrote, “The aura is the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be.” In the age of generative AI, we are learning to code and design not just for utility but for vibe — for that elusive sense of closeness, wonder, or resonance that makes digital experiences feel alive. Unlike mechanical reproduction, AI-vibing doesn’t diminish the aura — it centers and dematerializes it, allowing the vibe itself to become the primary artifact: reproduced, amplified, and recontextualized across media, moments, and minds.
Expanding the Practice: AI-Powered Vibe Making
With generative AI, the capacity to shape vibes has exploded. We now have tools that respond to emotional intent as much as logical instruction. A new creative toolkit is emerging:
Vibe Worldbuilding lets creators generate entire environments based on mood prompts. Describe “an eco-modular town at dusk with vertical aeroponic farms,” and you’ll get a playable 3D world. This is transforming game design, architecture, and immersive storytelling.
Vibe Soundtracking enables AI to generate music or ambiance that matches an emotional arc. Tools like Suno or AIVA help creators set the tone for scenes, brands, or personal moments — no music theory required.
Vibe Visualizing lets artists conjure images with emotional specificity. Midjourney can take prompts like “bittersweet nostalgia with a climate crisis glow” and turn them into evocative visuals — ideal for branding, fashion, or mood boarding.
Vibe Writing uses language models to produce text that channels a feeling or persona. You can co-write poems with AI, draft romantic sci-fi, or script dialogue that drips with sarcasm or hope. It’s not just writing — it’s tuning tone.
Vibe Acting brings to life AI characters with distinct emotional registers. In games, simulations, or digital theater, generative personalities can respond in ways that deepen immersion and connection.
Using multimodal tools like Runway or Pika Labs, Vibe Storytelling allows creators to script, generate, and edit entire cinematic experiences by directing mood, style, and rhythm — like an orchestra conductor for narrative energy.
New Frontiers: Vibe Investing and Vibe Leadership
As this culture of vibes evolves, it’s not just limited to creatives — it’s seeping into business and leadership:
Vibe Investing could be a lens for evaluating startups, products, or creative IP. It’s not just about traction or TAM (Total Addressable Market) but about cultural heat. Investors increasingly ask: “Does this brand feel like the future? Does it resonate with the cultural moment?” Vibe Investing combines market analysis with gut instinct, cultural fluency, and AI tools that track aesthetic trends, meme patterns, or generational sentiment.
Vibe Leadership rethinks leadership as emotional orchestration. Rather than just tracking tasks, managers curate the energy of a team or sprint. They use AI to generate team rituals and morale-boosting messages or even synthesize mood data from Slack and Notion. It’s a human-AI collaboration to maintain momentum, harmony, and emotional alignment across projects.
The Bigger Picture: From Logic to Vibe Literacy
AI-vibing is not anti-logic — it’s complimentary to logic. It requires taste, sensitivity, and the courage to feel your way through ambiguity. As AI handles more of the mechanical and mundane, those who can direct emotional energy, tonal coherence, and aesthetic flow will shape the next era of culture, work, and play.
As AI increasingly mediates vibe-making, we risk losing traditional forms of making — skills of the hand, body, and material intuition that once grounded human creativity. But this tradeoff is not new; as most people today can drive cars or operate computers yet lack ancient bushcraft or toolmaking skills, every new technology shifts our relationship to craft, often exchanging physical mastery for symbolic or system-level control.
Just as literacy once meant reading and writing, and digital literacy meant navigating screens and systems, the following essential skill might be vibe literacy — the ability to read, create, and remix feeling at scale through AI.
In that world, the best coders will be mood shapers. The best designers will be vibe curators. And the most impactful teams will be those who vibe well together — with each other and with their tools. In vibe making, the most essential skills are writing and storytelling — mastery of language — because those who can express a vibe accurately but with artistry and flair will shape the tools, set the tone, and become the true masters of this new creative frontier. AI-vibing is creating with feeling, fluency, and flow in an age of intelligent tools. It’s not a job title — it’s a mindset. And it might just be the most human skill we have to master.
References:
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, 217–251. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.
