I think what happened is that a lot of people started dismissing all LLM code creation as "vibe coding" because those people were anti-LLM, and so the term itself became an easy umbrella pejorative.

And then, more people saw these critics using "vibe coding" to refer to all LLM code creation, and naturally understood it to mean exactly that. Which means the recent articles we've seen about how good vibe coding starts with a requirements file, then tests that fail, then tests that pass, etc.

Like so many terms that started out being used pejoratively, vibe coding got reclaimed. And it just sounds cool.

Also because we don't really have any other good memorable term for describing code built entirely with LLM's from the ground up, separate from mere autocomplete AI or using LLM's to work on established codebases.

“Agentic coding” is probably more accurate, though many people (fairly) find the term “Agentic” to be buzz-wordy and obnoxious.

I’m willing to vibe code a spike project. That is to say, I want to see how well some new tool or library works, so I’ll tell the LLM to build a proof of concept, and then I’ll study that and see how I feel about it. Then I throw it away and build the real version with more care and attention.