What Does Vibe Coding Really Mean?

Once again, I worked overtime until eleven at night — still because of an AI project.

People often say that AI exists to make work more efficient and to free people from repetitive labor. But over the past two years, the industry I'm in doesn't seem to have become any easier. On the contrary, layoffs are frequent, project pressure persists, and "efficiency gains" seem to have morphed into "added pressure."

The company is promoting the concept of "AI Powered Employee," requiring designers to fully master Vibe Coding and become integrated individuals capable of independently handling product, design, and development. For the past three weeks, I've been in the office late almost every night, staring at VS Code debugging models, trying to make designs land faster, more accurately, and more automatically.

This way of working does make you rethink: what is the real value of AI?

When designers spend more time on the command line and prompt engineering, are we still thinking about "design" itself? Or are we merely chasing the goal of getting the system to "run through"? Sometimes I feel that our use of AI is becoming a kind of "productive ritual" — as long as the process runs and the system produces output, we consider the goal accomplished.

AI tools undoubtedly bring tremendous help. Whether it's brainstorming, copywriting, or research analysis, they vastly improve efficiency. Yet I still find myself wondering: why, despite frequently using these tools, is it so hard to feel joy or "passion"?

Perhaps it's because many AI products haven't yet found the right boundaries in their design — on one hand, they're expected to be "the user's companion," while on the other, they often overstep by occupying the user's thinking and living space.

In my conversations with many startups and AI teams, I've found everyone asking the same question: "How do we make users fall in love with AI?"

But maybe AI doesn't need to be "loved." If it's a tool, it should focus on helping people work more efficiently, rather than trying to replace their feelings or emotions. If it's a consumer product, its "intelligence" should be moderate and restrained, not all-encompassing in intervening in people's lives.

I still believe in AI's potential. The ideal future is one where it truly frees people from high-intensity repetitive labor, giving everyone more time to choose the life they want — whether that's creating, exercising, making art, or simply resting.

The meaning of AI shouldn't be making people busier — it should be making people freer.