Yeah, for some reason the term has been used interchangeably for a while, which is making it very hard to have a conversation about it since many people think vibe coding is just using AI to assist you.

From Karpathy's original post I understood it to be what you're describing. It is getting confusing.

The term sounds funny and quirky, so got overused. Also simply the term pushes emotional buttons on a lot of people so it's good for clickbait.