By 2026, Vibe Coding will have evolved from a novel trend among programmers into a foundational skill for ordinary people building products.

Article author and source: 36Kr

The times have quietly changed; by 2026, Vibe Coding is no longer just a novel trend within tech circles, but has become a crucial skill for ordinary people to launch projects and build their own products.

AI tools are fiercely competing, with a flood of products like Claude Design, Codex, and Antigravity hitting the market—all at once. With so many options available, how should ordinary users choose and use them?

Enough talk—here’s the conclusion based on the scenario:

If you want to create attractive websites, landing pages, product prototypes, or visual designs, start with Claude Design + Claude Code.

If you're building a product for long-term iteration, SaaS, tool systems, backends, or automated workflows, prioritize Codex.

If you want to experience the future of development—where AI plans, codes, opens browsers to verify, generates screenshots, and records videos—check out Google Antigravity first.

If you're already using Codex and want to leverage Google models for frontend redesign, code review, or planning: Codex + Gemini CLI is a compelling multi-model approach to explore.

In fact, the underlying issue behind choosing tools is a common pain point for countless ordinary people: having ideas but lacking technical skills.

Have you ever had a moment when a brilliant product idea suddenly popped into your head, and you eagerly wanted to turn your idea into a practical product—only to feel your enthusiasm cool halfway upon realizing you’d need to learn programming, set up the environment, and debug issues?

Technical expertise was once the toughest barrier for individual entrepreneurs. For the vast majority of solo founders, there has long been a formidable wall they struggled to overcome: ideas abound, but execution remains painfully difficult.

But in 2026, this high wall is being completely torn down. A new paradigm called Vibe Coding is sweeping the globe. Its core principle is brutally simple: you don’t need to write code—you just describe what you want in natural language, and the AI handles everything else.

We believe 2026 is destined to be the year of the Vibe Coding creator economy. AI capabilities have fully awakened and are rapidly evolving, completely breaking down barriers and turning the hype into a reality already unfolding.

What is Vibe Coding? It redefines development for everyday people.

Vibe Coding translates to "vibe programming" or "sensory development." This term was first introduced by Andrej Karpathy, former head of AI at Tesla and co-founder of OpenAI, who described this new programming experience as follows:

It’s not exactly coding—I just see something, say something, run something, then copy and paste it, and it basically works.

Vibe Coding vs. Traditional Programming:

By 2026, Vibe Coding had evolved from a novel trend among programmers into a foundational skill for ordinary people building products.

In the past, to bring a product idea to life, you needed to hire freelancers, recruit programmers, learn front-end and back-end development, set up environments, and fix bugs. Now, all you need to do is clearly describe your requirements—AI can plan your project, write the code, update the interface, run tests, and even open a browser to verify the results itself.

But a question arises: with so many tools—Claude Design, Codex, Google Antigravity, Gemini CLI—how do you choose?

Image: Codex official product showcase. It is bringing together task threads, projects, skills, and automation into a single workspace.

With so many tools available, how do you choose?

Is Antigravity a programming tool by Gemini?

To be precise: Antigravity is Google’s agent-first programming platform, deeply optimized for the Gemini model family, but it is not the Gemini CLI.

Gemini 3.1 Pro: The brain, designed for complex reasoning, visual understanding, interactive frontends, and code generation.

Gemini CLI: A terminal interface ideal for analyzing projects, writing code, and running scripts from the command line.

Antigravity: Development workspace with Agent Manager, Editor, Terminal, Browser, and Artifacts.

Google's official Codelab clearly describes Antigravity: it is not a traditional code completion tool, but rather a Mission Control for managing autonomous agents that can plan, code, browse the web, and verify results.

Figure: Google Antigravity Agent Manager. It functions more like a command center for managing AI agent tasks.

More interestingly, Antigravity doesn't just display the Gemini model—the official screenshots also show options like Claude Sonnet and GPT-OSS, indicating that its product positioning is not a "single-model chat box," but rather an agent-first IDE.

2. Codex: The Super App Roadmap — Consolidating the entire development workflow into a single workspace

Codex's greatest strength now isn't just writing code—it's becoming an AI-powered engineering superapp.

In OpenAI's latest update, Codex has integrated capabilities such as multi-agent parallelism, multi-file code modifications, multiple terminals, PR reviews, GitHub comment handling, in-app browser, page screenshots, frontend feedback, image generation, plugins, skills, automations, memory, and document preview into a single interface.

In other words, Codex’s approach is to keep users from jumping between ten different tools—instead, they can design, develop, verify, and submit everything within a single workspace.

Diagram: Codex Skills workflow. Codex’s approach is not just to write code, but to complete more comprehensive workflows using skills.

This is especially important for OPC sole proprietorships, as what sole proprietorships lack most isn't tools, but contextual continuity. If today you ask the AI to modify the frontend, tomorrow to fix an API, and the day after to write a PR—and each task is scattered across different tools—productivity will be drained by constant context switching.

The value of Codex lies in its aim to transform AI development from a "chat window" into a "production workstation."

3. Claude Design: Strongest in frontend and visual expression, but with a more dispersed product line.

The advantage of Claude Design is clear: it understands design better.

It can generate visual designs, product prototypes, web pages, PPTs, and one-pagers, and allows you to refine them through local comments, direct editing, sliders for spacing, color, and layout. It can even read code repositories and design files to help your team build a design system.

Illustration: Claude Design enables fine-tuned visual adjustments. Local comments, direct editing, and slider-based parameter tuning are what set it apart from conventional code tools.

This is very beginner-friendly for non-technical entrepreneurs. Many people aren’t lacking product ideas—they just end up with something that doesn’t look like a real product. Claude Design addresses this by turning rough requirements into more polished visual representations.

However, its drawback is clear: Claude Design and Claude Code operate in segmented collaboration—design first in Claude Design, then hand off to Claude Code for implementation. While this workflow is professional, it lacks the integrated feel of Codex, where code, browser, terminal, documentation, and PRs all reside within a single super workspace.

Therefore, Claude is better suited for: design-first, product expression prioritized. Codex is better suited for: engineering闭环, continuous iteration prioritized.

4. Gemini 3.1 Pro: A powerful model for frontend software design, not just a standalone tool

The focus of Gemini 3.1 Pro is not on "what interface it has," but on the model's capabilities themselves.

Google's official documentation emphasizes that it is well-suited for complex tasks, visual explanations, code animations, interactive design, 3D experiences, and website-level frontend generation—such as creating website-ready animated SVGs, building real-time dashboards, and developing 3D interactive interfaces.

So its optimal role in Vibe Coding isn't necessarily as a standalone IDE, but rather as a powerful model orchestrated across tools: performing agentic coding in Antigravity, handling terminal planning and code generation in Gemini CLI, serving as a frontend redesign advisor in Codex via Gemini CLI, and building complex interactive prototypes in AI Studio / API.

Figure 5: Official screenshot of the Gemini CLI. It serves as the gateway to the Google Gemini series models in the terminal and is also suitable for invocation by Codex.

Invoke the Gemini CLI within the Codex superapp. This isn’t just switching tools—it’s using Codex as your primary workspace and Gemini as an external expert model.

Codex is responsible for reading projects, modifying files, running tests, and monitoring browsers.

The Gemini CLI is responsible for the frontend redesign.

Gemini 3.1 Pro handles complex visual, interactive, and animation design.

Codex implements the plan into code.

This is advanced vibe coding: not just asking one AI, but orchestrating multiple AIs.

5. Antigravity: The Future Form Most Resembling an AI Technology Team

Antigravity’s product logic differs from Codex and Claude. From the start, it wasn’t designed to treat AI as a co-pilot, but as an agent team. You provide a goal, it plans; it writes code; it opens a browser; it takes screenshots; it produces artifacts; you then review and provide feedback based on those artifacts.

Diagram: Antigravity’s three-panel layout of Editor + Terminal + Agent. It transforms the IDE into an agent-first workspace.

What’s most noteworthy about it isn’t “code generation,” but its verification capabilities. The biggest issue with conventional Vibe Coding is: the AI says it’s fixed, but you don’t know if it’s truly fixed. Antigravity solves this trust problem with Artifacts—you can see the task list, implementation plan, screenshots, browser recordings, and code diffs.

Figure: Antigravity Artifacts and browser verification. Screenshots, screen recordings, and implementation plans to address trust issues in AI development.

This is much like the future of a one-person company’s tech team: you’re not a programmer, but a product owner. AI isn’t a chat partner—it’s your execution team. You don’t write code line by line; instead, you review plans, examine screenshots, provide feedback, and make decisions.

How should an average person design their workflow according to Vibe Coding logic?

1. Idea Stage: Define the product using natural language first

First, clearly define: who you're solving the problem for, what specific scenario you're addressing, what the core functionality is, what users see at first glance, and what the minimum viable version looks like. This step is best discussed using any one of the models—Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT—but do not rush into writing code.

2. Visual Stage: Use Claude Design or Gemini 3.1 Pro for frontend development

If you value design aesthetics, use Claude Design. If you prioritize interaction, animation, 3D, and complex visualizations, use Gemini 3.1 Pro. The goal at this stage is not perfection, but to establish a viable UI direction.

3. Engineering Phase: Use Codex as the primary workstation

Codex is well-suited for handling real engineering tasks: setting up project structure, writing frontend pages, integrating backend APIs, running tests, fixing errors, previewing in the browser, submitting PRs, and managing subsequent iterations. Its advantage lies in centralized context, making it less likely to fragment the project.

4. Verification Stage: Request evidence from AI as per the specified requirements

No matter which tool you use, make sure the AI outputs the implementation plan, list of modified files, testing methodology, screenshots, execution results, and known risks. This is the core shift in Vibe Coding: you don’t write code, but you must know how to validate it.

5. Summary

What ordinary people truly need to learn is not a specific tool button, but this new set of capabilities: defining products with natural language, generating designs with AI, completing development with agents, reviewing and validating outcomes, and continuously iterating with your own industry judgment.

Vibe Coding is redefining the cost of personal entrepreneurship

The essence of entrepreneurship has always been reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Vibe Coding’s greatest value lies in shattering the high-cost constraints of traditional development, perfectly aligning with the underlying logic of the super individual.

The superindividual of the future may not write code themselves, but they will certainly direct AI to write code.

1. Technical Costs: From "Burning Money" to "Small Change"

In the past, customizing a small app could cost tens of thousands when outsourced, with ongoing fees required for iterations. Now, with Vibe Coding, the basic version is autonomously generated by AI, requiring only minimal costs for fine-tuning and deployment—reducing development expenses by over 70% and enabling you to launch your product with a small budget.

2. Implementation Timeline: From Slow Simmer to Quick Sauté

Traditional development—communicating requirements, designing solutions, writing code, testing, and making revisions—often takes months. With Vibe Coding, requirements are communicated instantly, AI generates code instantly, and issues are fixed instantly.

A lightweight tool that gets you from 0 to 1 in just a few days. Test on a small scale, iterate quickly, and maintain full control over your pace. In rapidly evolving niche markets, being first to market is your greatest advantage.

3. Capability Barrier: From Service Monetization to Product Monetization

In the past, individual entrepreneurs were largely confined to lightweight service sectors such as content creation, consulting, and resource matchmaking, because without building products, they couldn't generate long-term compounding returns or build lasting assets.

Lowering the technical barrier is raising the entrepreneurial barrier.

As "building apps without code" becomes a trend, many mistakenly believe that entrepreneurship has become easier—that any idea can easily be turned into a profitable product. But the reality is the opposite. Tools can replace code, but they cannot replace business acumen, demand insight, or user-centric thinking.

1. AI development is not without its limitations.

While Vibe Coding has its benefits, don't get too carried away. AI-generated code may contain redundancies and vulnerabilities, struggle to perfectly handle complex business logic, and fall short in deep security protections and long-term maintenance. Over-relying on AI to generate code blindly and deploying it without scrutiny can lead, at best, to functional errors, and at worst, to a damaged reputation.

Tools are accelerators, not substitutes—you can't just lie down and do nothing.

2. Everyone can make a product—what’s truly valuable?

When everyone can quickly create tools and applications using AI, homogenization will accelerate rapidly. In the future, what will set people apart won't be "who can code," but:

Who can precisely identify niche pain points?

Who can deeply explore vertical scenarios?

Who can deliver excellent user service and continuous iteration?

Tools can be copied, but insight, execution, and deep user understanding cannot be replicated by anyone.

3. Understanding is the ultimate barrier

When OPC meets Vibe Coding, the final mile for a one-person company is fully unlocked. With AI-powered development capabilities, a single individual can handle content, operations, customer acquisition, and independently build tools and refine products.

Can't code? No problem.

No ideas? Lack of judgment? That’s not great...

When technical barriers decrease, what truly determines whether you get lost in a sea of homogeneity or become the next super individual is never how many more lines of code you know than AI, but whether you can think three steps ahead, understand one additional industry, and see one layer deeper into human nature.

Vibe Coding × OPC, dual wings unlocking a new era of individual creation

AI development tools, represented by Vibe Coding, and the OPC model are jointly outlining a vision. The essence of this vision is not “machines replacing humans,” but “individual empowerment through human-machine collaboration.”

At the AIGC Developer Conference, a key assertion was repeatedly emphasized: Vibe Coding and OPC have a "two wings of one body" relationship.

Vibe Coding

It is a technological foundation: lowering the barrier to creation, enabling ordinary people to build products.

OPC

It is an organizational vehicle: enabling individuals to achieve a closed loop of personal value and start their own company.

The combination of the two forms the dual engine of individual creative economies in the AI era.

The arrival of the Year of Vibe Coding is not just a technological upgrade, but a step toward entrepreneurial equality. The primary drivers of innovation in the industry are shifting from centralized development teams to vast numbers of "domain experts" and "super individual creators."

For every OPC entrepreneur, Vibe Coding is a reliable tool that helps you quickly build prototypes and validate ideas—but whether you can build a sustainable company ultimately depends on your understanding of the industry, your commitment to serving users, and your willingness to take full responsibility for your product.

This is precisely why the OPC entrepreneurial model resonates with Vibe Coding. As one developer put it: AI is an incredibly powerful co-pilot, but you still have to hold the steering wheel.

Next, you can try answering: What am I supposed to do? Who am I solving this for?

The entrepreneurship of the future won’t be about technical proficiency, but about cognition, choice, and execution. Embracing the era of Vibe Coding, product-led entrepreneurship for ordinary people has only just begun.