Agentic Engineering: The disciplined alternative to vibe coding in AI-assisted development
By
Addy Osmani
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Summary
The article discusses the evolution of AI-assisted programming, contrasting the "vibe coding" approach (coined by Andrej Karpathy) — where developers blindly accept AI-generated code — with a more disciplined methodology called "Agentic Engineering." The latter emphasizes human oversight, engineering rigor, and structured workflows where AI agents handle implementation under careful human supervision. The piece argues that "vibe coding" has become an overused umbrella term that fails to distinguish between casual prototyping and serious, production-grade AI-assisted development.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledA year ago, Andrej Karpathy coined 'vibe coding' to describe a gleefully reckless way of programming: you prompt, hand the keyboard to an AI, accept everything it spits out, don't read the diffs, iterate by pasting error messages back in.
The problem is that 'vibe coding' has become a suitcase term.
People now use it to describe everything from a weekend hack to a disciplined engineering workflow where AI agents handle implementation under human oversight.
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