Overview
- Collins announced the 2025 pick on Thursday, defining the term as using natural‑language prompts with AI to write code and noting a surge in usage since its first appearance in February.
- The phrase was coined by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy to describe building software by describing what you want and letting models generate the code.
- Early adoption signals include vendor rollouts such as tools from JetBrains, AWS and Salesforce, alongside reports of employers seeking these skills.
- A widely cited example is a Walmart job listing for a senior engineer that asked for a “vibe coder,” with compensation reportedly up to $220,000, reflecting rising labor‑market interest.
- Experts and outlets highlight limits—hallucinations, hidden flaws, security weaknesses and a complexity ceiling—so current best uses are prototyping, MVPs and experimentation, while the Collins shortlist also featured terms like clanker, broligarchy, aura farming, glaze, HENRY, micro‑retirement, coolcation, taskmasking and biohacking.