The Not Enough Bread Guide To Vibing With AI (Now With 43% More Vibe Coding™)

Welcome back, dear reader, or as AI calls you, freemium user #49203.

You’ve learned how to vibe with AI. But are you ready to vibe code?

Thanks to New Scientist for helpfully explaining vibe coding as “the art of curating the emotional and cultural atmosphere around AI use” — aka making sure your AI interactions don’t scream help I’m losing my mind — we’re here to break it down, sprinkle in some self-awareness, and roast ourselves along the way.

Let’s go.

✨ What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding isn’t literally coding (no JavaScript hats needed). It’s about the attitude you bring when working with AI.

Think:

What’s the mood?
What’s the intention?
Are you channeling cool curiosity or keyboard-smashing existential dread?

It’s the difference between:

“Generate summary of market trends.”
vs
“Hey, let’s pull together something breezy but sharp, like if a McKinsey consultant got drunk at brunch.”

One is a task. The other is a vibe.

🤖 How to Vibe Code Without Falling Into a Meme Hole

✅ Set the mood.
Are you here for inspiration? For speed? For chaos? Name it. If you’re “just poking around,” own that.

✅ Talk to AI like a creative partner, not your saviour.
It’s a tool, not a priest. Don’t confess your secrets or beg it to fix your life.

✅ Know when to lean in — and when to back off.
Use it for drafts, ideas, and wacky experiments. But maybe not for your wedding vows or therapy sessions. (Sorry, ChatGPT. You’re good, but you’re not that good.)

🕶️ Common Vibe Coding Styles (And What They Say About You)

🥇 The Cool Collaborator
You throw prompts like “rewrite this email as if David Attenborough narrated it” and say “nice one, bot” when it nails it. You’re thriving.

🥈 The Overachiever
You run five prompts, compare outputs, fact-check sources, and still end up rewriting everything yourself. The vibe? Exhausted, but polished.

🥉 The Meme Lord
You feed AI cursed prompts for chaos:

“Write a sonnet about Bitcoin as if written by a Victorian chimney sweep.”
You’re the reason AI ethics panels exist.

🍷 The Aesthetic Purist
You only use AI if it fits the ✨vibes✨ of your project. Mid-century minimalism? Fine. Brutalist AI horror art? Sure. But no default Canva templates. You have standards.

💥 What Vibe Coding is NOT (calm down, LinkedIn)

❌ “Personal brand optimisation through AI-human synergy.”
❌ “Unlocking my true potential as a future-of-work thought leader.”
❌ “Outsourcing my entire personality to a chatbot.”

We’re here for human-AI collaboration, not full personality upload. Take your foot off the accelerator, Mark.

🌿 Does Vibe Coding Actually Matter?

Honestly?

No, if you’re just trying to get stuff done.
Yes, if you care about how you feel while you’re doing it — and whether it feeds or drains your creativity.

In other words: vibe coding matters if vibes matter to you. And if you’re here reading this? They probably do.

⚡ Final Bread Crumb:

At the end of the day, vibe coding is just a fancy label for how you show up to the weird, glitchy, occasionally brilliant dance of working with AI.

So go forth. Prompt weirdly. Laugh when it fails. Post the chaos. And for the love of all carbs, touch grass when you’re done.

🌟 Bonus Section: Other Ways You Can Vibe with AI

So, you’ve got the basics down. You’re vibe coding like a pro, sipping your iced coffee, throwing ironic prompts at ChatGPT, and casually referencing “my AI assistant” like it’s your overworked intern.

But wait — there’s more! Here are a few bonus ways to elevate your AI vibe game and subtly confuse your friends and coworkers.

🎲 1. Let AI Make Unimportant Life Decisions
What should you name your fantasy football team? Which pizza topping should you try tonight? Should you finally clean out that drawer of tangled charger cables?

Offload the trivial. Keep your brain for the big stuff (like overthinking text messages from 3 days ago).

🎤 2. Co-write Songs or Poems (Badly)
Ask AI to help you write a breakup ballad between your two houseplants. Or a rap about your WiFi router’s emotional journey.

Will it be good?
No.

Will it be weirdly satisfying?
Absolutely.

📧 3. Use AI to Draft Passive-Aggressive Emails (That You Never Send)

“Per my last email…”
“Just circling back one more time…”
“Thanks in advance for your attention to this matter!”

Draft. Read. Laugh. Delete. Keep your vibe clean, your soul light, and your work enemies guessing.

🎮 4. Build Your Own Little AI Games
Prompt it to run a Dungeons & Dragons one-shot, play a text adventure, or make up personality quizzes like “Which European train station are you based on your snacking habits?”

Why? No reason. Just vibes.

🛠️ 5. Ask AI for Absolutely Useless Advice

“How would a Victorian child survive a modern office job?”
“What’s the best way to apologise to a house spider?”
“Rank the items in my fridge by moral alignment.”

Peak vibe: wasting computational power on nonsense — because you can.

🌿 6. Take AI on a Walk (Metaphorically)
Narrate your walk to your phone’s notes app and ask AI to turn it into: