Guillermo Rauch, CEO and founder of Vercel, has spent decades creating tools that make web development faster and more accessible. “Maybe not everybody is a great coder, but a great coder can now be anyone,” he said on the Fortune Term Sheet podcast., which captured the philosophy that drives his work.
For Rauch, the shift has a name: vibe coding. It is the idea that building for the internet no longer needs to feel like writing complex instructions for a machine. Instead, it should feel closer to sketching an idea, describing an intent, or trying out a mood, with the system taking care of the rest. The philosophy is about letting more people step into the act of creation. Raunch and his team have begun to bring this through Vercel’s vibe coding platform, V0 (v-zero), which allows users to input prompts and see their ideas and watch them take shape in code.
V0 is a generative AI platform that converts natural language descriptions or prompts into full-stack applications. Users can describe what they want, be it a landing page, job board, or any dashboard. V0 handles the design, logic, and movements. It uses agentic AI to plan, reason, and execute tasks.
The demand for digital products has exploded, but the barriers to entry remain high. New frameworks promise speed, but also bring new complexity. Every advance seems to require yet another layer of expertise. “We can collapse the distance between an idea and a product,” Rauch said. That collapse is where he places vibe coding: a space where creativity can move faster than complexity.
This is why Rauch positions vibe coding as a major shift in how software gets built. Past breakthroughs like cloud hosting, low-code platforms, and design tools such as Figma succeeded because they removed friction and expanded who could participate. Vibe coding continues that trajectory, this time applied to code itself.
What does this mean in practice? Instead of sweating through boilerplate code or debugging endless errors, developers work with AI to shape ideas directly. Professionals still provide direction, reviews, and judgment, but the mechanics shift into the background. It is less about grinding through syntax and more about translating intent. In that sense coding begins to look less like engineering and more like design. “Figma unlocked design for people who never went to design school,” Rauch explained. “We want to do the same for code. V0 is the first step in making it possible.”
Andrew Ng, Founder of DeepLearning.AI, takes a very different view. Speaking on the No Priors podcast, he avoided the term “vibe coding” and called it “AI-assisted coding.” In his words, “AI coding is still coding, just faster.” For Ng, the focus is on speeding up serious engineering instead of sketching ideas. He said that as AI handles more of the coding work, the real challenge becomes choosing what to build. This framing contrasts with Rauch’s design-first philosophy, which emphasizes lowering friction and expanding participation.
The comparison matters because past tools were built for specialists, while vibe coding powered by V0 already lowers the barriers and opens participation to a broader group. Rauch believes this makes web development less intimidating and more participatory. “We are lowering the activation energy of building on the web,” he said. The language he uses is scientific, but the effect he describes is personal: a teenager trying to build a side project, a founder without an engineering team, a marketer experimenting with a landing page. Each of them can get further, faster, without being shut out by technical walls.
Skeptics see risks. If coding becomes too easy, does it trivialize the craft? If AI takes over the basics, does it lead to lower-quality work? Rauch does not dismiss those concerns, but he frames the problem differently. Expertise, he argues, will always matter perhaps more than ever because experts will still be needed to make architectural decisions, ensure quality, and guide standards. The difference is that the pool of participants expands. A larger share of the population gets to build. “You will always need people who understand how systems work,” he said. “But you will also have many more people able to participate at a creative level.”
Vercel’s V0 and the idea of vibe coding let anyone create apps or launch businesses in seconds. This accessibility is appealing but comes with a major limitation: the outputs often lack structured logic, database integration, or adaptable backends. Non-technical users can produce interfaces that look functional, yet without proper architectural guidance these apps remain incomplete and less reliable for practical use. As Andrew Ng emphasized, “The hard decisions, what to build, how to architect it, still require human judgment.” AI can speed up coding but cannot replace the expertise needed to make software robust, scalable and maintainable.
The limitations of V0 become clear when compared with alternatives built for fully structured software. Platforms like UI Bakery and Bubble combine AI-assisted generation with full-stack capabilities. They include workflows, database integration and distribution tools to ensure apps function correctly and remain maintainable. Retool focuses on internal tools, combining speed with structured data handling for practical use. Replit AI and Cursor provide complete development environments helping with debugging, code refactoring and multi-file management while keeping human oversight central. Lovable AI, though more design-oriented, guides UI creation in a way that preserves usability standards better than V0.
The difference is clear. These alternatives prioritize reliability, scalability and maintainable architecture over instant creation. Unlike V0, which produces apps quickly but without structured guidance, these platforms provide frameworks that make outputs practical and durable. The result is software that works can be maintained and can grow qualities essential for any serious application.
