In early 2025, in the founder community, you couldn't swing a cat without hearing about the billion-dollar solopreneur. Using the power of AI and a great idea, they could build and service a SaaS company on their own.
By the summer the scene went quiet. Most people realised that you needed expertise in HCI and software engineering to hammer these products into something that could actually work.
By the autumn all the fanfare had died down and the vibe coding hype moved on to the next big thing.
That's not the full story though, because working behind the scenes, away from the content creator hype that surrounded vibe coding, some pioneering engineers and designers were pushing boundaries. They were using their domain expertise to collaborate with AI to build great products, fast.
For most of 2025 this was frustrating work. The models weren't good enough, the output was poor, and it mostly felt as if it was quicker to do the work yourself.
Then, and I've written about this before, November 2025 hit and everything changed. Opus 4.5 and Codex 5.2 came out and made October's tech seem like relics of a bygone era.
These pioneering engineers started collaborating on creating specs and then having the AI write the full end-to-end code. And what was produced wasn't rubbish. It was actually pretty bloody good.
They recognised the shift and have started to build the professional practice of AI Engineering: domain experts working with AI to deliver new products.
So is this still vibe coding?
Yes and no.
- Inexperienced people relying on AI
- Vague prompts and good intentions
- Fragile products that couldn't survive real users
- AI does the thinking and the execution
- Domain experts collaborating with AI
- Proper specifications, informed by experience
- Robust products built at speed
- Humans handle the thinking; AI handles the execution
Why this matters
This distinction matters because it means the speed gains from AI aren't going away. They're just moving into the hands of people who know what to do with them.
For businesses, this is significant. It means you can move from concept to working product in a fraction of the time, without sacrificing the quality and robustness that your users expect. It means smaller, more senior teams can deliver what used to require large departments.
The competitive advantage isn't access to AI (everyone has that) but the depth of expertise you bring to the table.
The era of vibe coding was a false start. AI engineering is the real thing.
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