Every time a new tech trend hits the scene, reactions typically fall into two categories: excitement or scepticism. Some teams rush to adopt it, others reject it right away.

At Railsware, we’ve learned to pause before doing either. Being technologically agnostic, we don’t worship or cancel every shiny new tool. Instead, we look at what it can really change: how we think, how we work, and what outcomes it helps us achieve.

That’s the mindset we applied to vibe coding, an approach that’s been a hot topic in 2025 across the product and engineering world. Some call it the future of software creation. Others dismiss it as another no-code fad with better marketing. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between

In this article, we’ll break down the highlights from a recent Code Story podcast featuring our co-CEO, Sergiy Korolov: what vibe coding actually is, where hype meets reality, and how it could reshape the way we build products.

Difference between AI-Assisted Development and Vibe Coding

Before getting to the most interesting part of any article, opinions, let’s draw a clear line between AI-assisted software development and the broader vibe coding concept. Though both involve AI, their goals, audiences, and workflows are fundamentally different.

AI-assisted software development refers to the use of AI tools, such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or CodeWhisperer, to support professional software engineers. The key points:

• These tools augment human expertise, not replace it.

• They provide syntax suggestions, boilerplate code, refactoring options, and highlight potential errors.
• They accelerate research and decision-making, helping engineers navigate large codebases, explore libraries, or understand system architecture.

Most software development doesn’t solely involve typing code, but understanding what to build and how. AI helps with these tasks by summarizing documentation, suggesting alternative approaches, and connecting disparate modules, without replacing the critical thinking that engineers bring to complex problems.

For example:

• When a Railsware engineer is integrating a new API, AI-assisted tools can suggest boilerplate code, relevant library functions, or even architectural patterns.
• When exploring a large, unfamiliar codebase, the AI can summarize module dependencies, highlight potential conflicts, and speed up onboarding.

Vibe coding, on the other hand, targets a different audience and a different type of problem. It allows non-technical users — often product managers or designers — to generate functional code or prototypes using natural language prompts. Platforms like Lovable, V0, or similar tools let someone describe a desired feature in plain English, and the system produces working code or interactive pages.

While AI-assisted development supports engineers in doing their work faster and smarter, vibe coding lets people “bypass” traditional software expertise entirely to quickly test ideas, generate proofs of concept, or spin up MVPs. It’s about speed, experimentation, and lowering the barrier to entry. However, it comes with trade-offs in maintainability, scalability, and integration with complex systems.

In short:

• AI-assisted development = AI as a partner for skilled engineers. It accelerates research, coding, and problem-solving without replacing expertise.
• Vibe coding = AI as a creator for non-technical users. It enables rapid prototyping but struggles with long-term system complexity and integration.

Understanding this distinction is crucial because it frames how teams can strategically adopt these tools, what expectations are realistic, and where real value lies versus hype.

The bright side of vibe coding

Not everything about Vibe Coding is doom and gloom. Its clearest, most positive effect is lowering the barrier to entry — turning product experimentation into a creative sandbox. That matters for two groups in particular:

• People who are completely outside of software development
• Product-minded professionals (product managers, designers, content leads) who need fast, tangible proofs of concept.

1) A hands-on intro for non-technical creators

For someone with no coding experience, vibe coding can be a surprisingly fun entry point into how digital products are made.

Take one of our graphic designers, for example. He loves experimenting with tools that let him create custom UI elements, such as unique buttons, scrollbars, or spinners that make his workflow smoother when editing videos or photos.

Recently, he decided to go one step further and design his own physical device — starting with a software simulator. With no background in engineering, he turned to web-based coding tools and began experimenting through prompts. It was rough going: he could generate something almost right, but refining it meant endless iterations. Changing one small thing often broke something else (LLM users will relate — context is a tricky beast). After a few days of frustration, he gave up on web coding.

Then he discovered Cursor. Despite still having zero coding experience, he managed to create a small iPhone app with a spinning wheel — his first working prototype. Here’s a funny story: he wanted the wheel to make a single spin, but it spun ten times instead. So he tried instructing it to “spin 10,” but it kept multiplying — eventually making a hundred spins.

Despite these quirks, the experience motivated him to actually start building something, which is often the biggest hurdle for beginners.

In many cases, vibe coding can motivate people to learn more (front-end basics or how to collaborate with engineers more effectively), which is a quiet but important cultural win for product teams.

2) Rapid proofs of concept for product people

For product managers (PdMs), vibe coding’s biggest strength is speed: it helps turn an idea into an interactive proof of concept quicky. Instead of producing static wireframes, a PdM can describe a flow in detail and get a working page or micro-app that stakeholders can interact with. It’s not production code, but it serves three practical purposes:

• Validate assumptions quickly: you can test whether a flow feels intuitive or whether a core interaction actually helps users.
• Align stakeholders around a concrete example: a live prototype reduces ambiguity in discussions with designers, marketers, or customers.
• Focus engineering effort: a prototype clarifies the scope of work for engineers — what needs to be robust and what is only exploratory.

What’s Next: A Layer Above Code

So, what’s next for vibe coding? The exciting part is that it’s evolving into a new kind of layer — a bridge between human intent and the logic that drives software.

Think of tools like Zapier or N8n, which let you automate complex workflows without writing a single line of code. Vibe coding takes this idea further: instead of just connecting existing blocks, it starts translating plain-language intentions into functioning systems. As one way to put it: “It’s not about building a full application yet — it’s about taking small blocks of automation and making your idea actually work.”

This could open up entirely new possibilities on platforms like WordPress, Shopify, or analytics tools, where users describe what they want in natural language and instantly generate dashboards, workflows, or micro-apps.

In other words, vibe coding might not replace engineers, but it changes the way humans interact with software. You no longer need to wrestle with syntax or debug endlessly. Instead, you focus on what you want to achieve, and the system figures out the rest.

Listen to the full episode on the Code Story podcast

This was just a short excerpt from the conversation with Sergiy Korolov on Code Story.

To hear the full episode, check out the link.