Vibe Coding as a Reconfiguration of Intent Mediation in Software Development: Definition, Implications, and Research Agenda
Christian Meske, Tobias Hermanns, Esther von der Weiden, Kai-Uwe Loser, Thorsten Berger

TL;DR
Vibe coding is an emerging software development paradigm where humans and Generative AI collaborate through natural language dialogue, shifting intent mediation from deterministic instructions to probabilistic inference, with significant implications for democratization and systemic leverage.
Contribution
The paper defines vibe coding as a new paradigm, analyzes its implications, and proposes a comprehensive research agenda for understanding this collaborative AI-human software development process.
Findings
Redistributes epistemic labor between humans and machines
Shifts expertise from technical implementation to orchestration
Identifies opportunities and risks of vibe coding
Abstract
Software development is undergoing a fundamental transformation as vibe coding becomes widespread, with large portions of contemporary codebases now being generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The disconnect between rapid adoption and limited conceptual understanding highlights the need for an inquiry into this emerging paradigm. Drawing on an intent perspective and historical analysis, we define vibe coding as a software development paradigm where humans and Generative AI (GenAI) engage in collaborative flow to co-create software artifacts through natural language dialogue, shifting the mediation of developer intent from deterministic instruction to probabilistic inference. By intent mediation, we refer to the fundamental process through which developers translate their conceptual goals into representations that computational systems can execute. Our results show that vibe coding…
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