It’s rare that a “shower thought” becomes a Wikipedia entry, but that is exactly what happened with Vibe Coding. One year later, the landscape of software development has shifted so fundamentally that the “vibe” is maturing into something far more robust.
Here is an exploration of that evolution: from the experimental chaos of early LLMs to the disciplined era of Agentic Engineering.
The Origin: What was Vibe Coding?
A year ago, vibe coding emerged as a memetic description for a new way of building. It was characterized by a specific energy: low friction, high exploration, and a touch of “let’s see if this works.”
At the time, LLM capabilities were impressive but inconsistent. You could describe a vision, and the model would hallucinate a scaffolding into existence. It was perfect for:
Throwaway projects: Building a quick tool that only needs to work once.
Demos: Prototyping a UI faster than you could open an IDE.
Exploration: Testing the “vibe” of an idea without committing to a heavy architecture.
It “almost worked,” and for a while, that was enough. But as the novelty wore off, the industry began asking for something vibe coding couldn’t guarantee: Reliability.
The Shift: Enter Agentic Engineering
Today, the “just ship the vibe” approach is being replaced by a more disciplined workflow. While many have tried to rename this evolution, the term Agentic Engineering captures the dual nature of the modern professional stack.
1. Why “Agentic”?
The new default is no longer manual syntax entry. We have moved from “autocomplete” to “orchestration.”
The Workflow: You aren’t writing code 99% of the time; you are acting as the conductor for a fleet of LLM agents.
The Role: Your job is to define constraints, set objectives, and manage the hand-offs between specialized agents.
2. Why “Engineering”?
The word “vibe” implies a lack of rigor. “Engineering” reclaims the professional standard.
Oversight and Scrutiny: Unlike vibe coding, agentic engineering demands high-level auditing. You are leveraging the speed of agents without compromising on software quality.
New Depth: There is an art and science to orchestrating these systems. It requires a different kind of expertise—understanding model behaviors, prompt chain optimization, and rigorous testing frameworks.
My Take
As we move through 2026, the progress isn’t just happening in the models (the “brains”) but in the agent layer (the “hands”).
The goal is no longer just to get a demo running. The goal is to use the massive leverage provided by AI agents to build production-grade, enterprise-ready software at a speed that was previously impossible. We are trading the “shower thought” spontaneity of vibe coding for the calculated, high-leverage precision of engineering.
Vibe coding got us through the door, but Agentic Engineering is how we’re going to build the house.
