Teaching by Vibe: Why Educators Should Pay Attention to the Vibe Coding Movement

I’ve been building widgets lately. Not the shiny, complicated ones that only a seasoned developer could love—but classroom-ready tools that help my students see ideas more clearly and interact with their learning. I call this work “vibe coding,” but the name isn’t mine. It comes from a broader movement—one that’s quietly reshaping how non-developers like us can design educational technology with AI assistance.

In a recent article on Medium, Niall McNulty defines vibe coding as the practice of describing what you want in natural language while AI handles the bulk of the programming work. The term, originally sparked by AI pioneer Andrej Karpathy, is elegant: let users in this case teachers, focus on the what and the why, and let AI carry more of the how.

Why Vibe Coding Matters for Us

As teachers and instructional designers, we’ve long had ideas for tools that could help our learners—interactive maps, click-and-drag sorters, animated quizzes, or self-grading checklists—but we’ve often been stopped cold by the technical barrier of writing code from scratch. That barrier is fading.

Vibe coding shifts the role of the educator from coder to conductor. We prompt. We test. We iterate. And in doing so, we stay focused on the teaching, not the syntax.

Tools in the Field: Lovable vs. Replit

I’ve been experimenting with platforms like Replit and Lovable. Both allow me to generate functional, classroom-ready interactives with AI support. Replit, with its IDE-like interface, is strong on customization and appeals to those with some technical background. But Lovable has won me over.

Here’s why:

Pedagogy-aware outputs. Lovable seems to “get” what I’m trying to do. When I prompt it to build a concept-matching game or a data-collection dashboard for student projects, it doesn’t just produce code—it produces something I can use tomorrow morning.

Natural prompts, fast results. I’m not writing full specs or troubleshooting command lines. I’m describing the learning moment: “I need a visual flowchart tool where students can map steps in a process and annotate their decisions.” And Lovable delivers.

Cleaner, more accurate results. Compared to Replit, Lovable requires fewer corrections, which means I’m spending less time tweaking and more time teaching.

A Philosophical Fit for Educators

There’s something almost Illichian about this turn. Ivan Illich, in his book, Tools for Conviviality, imagined a world where tools enhance human autonomy and participation—not one where technology and institutions dominate the user. Vibe coding feels like a step in that direction. It allows us to reclaim technological agency in the classroom—not as consumers of someone else’s design, but as co-creators of our own learning experiences.

And let’s be honest: it’s deeply satisfying. There’s joy in building something that works. There’s purpose in shaping the tools of instruction to fit your students learning needs. There is joy in creating interactives that make meaning of your content. 

What’s Next for the Profession?

McNulty suggests that vibe coding may change software development altogether. I’d argue it will also shift how educators think about technology—not as a sealed product, but as a flexible language. With these tools teachers and educators learning to speak a new interactive learning language with AI as our assistant. A language or code of pedagogy. 

For those designing curriculum, planning PD, or rethinking digital pedagogy—now is the time to explore this exciting space. Start with one interactive. One prompt. One moment of wonder in your classroom.

We know that teaching is both an art and a science. Coding interactives has added the language of vibe coding to that conversation. A conversation that educators can have with students, with ideas, and yes, even with the code