How Vibe Coding Changed No-Code App Building

"Vibe coding." It's one of those terms that sounds like a passing trend. That is, until you look at what it is actually doing to how apps get built.

The term comes from AI researcher and former OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, who coined it in February 2025 to describe a way of building software where you tell AI what you want in plain language and continue guiding the result through prompts and iterations. 

Even more plainly: Vibe coding is where AI takes your ideas and intent, and translates them into actual, working software. For no-code app building, this is an even bigger shift than how it sounds.

No-code tools have existed for more than a decade, letting people build apps by dragging components, often called "blocks" or "modules", onto a screen. Instead of typing out the exact rules and punctuation a programming language requires, you wire up an app's logic (the instructions that tell it what to do in response to something like a tap or a swipe) using these visual pieces. That approach made it possible to build an app without knowing a programming language.

Still, in visual app development, understanding how an app actually fits together still falls entirely on you, the newly-minted, no-coding app builder.

What changes in no-code with vibe coding

Put simply, it makes the last sentence of that previous section a lot less intimidating, because vibe coding reduces that manual assembly step by letting you start with a description of what you want to build.

Instead of placing components one at a time, you speak to your AI model like you're giving a developer instructions based on your ideas.

You: "I want to build an app that helps people turn their morning routines into a game. Users should be able to create a routine, check off tasks, earn points, and track their progress…"

And so on, and so forth.

Through prompts like the one above, your AI app builder turns your ideas into parts of the app, including layouts, designs, and logic.

Traditional coding lets you build by writing instructions in code. No-code replaced much of that code with visual components and logic. Vibe coding adds another layer: now you can describe what you want in natural language and let AI create the starting point for you. 

For this reason, vibe coding has become the fastest on-ramp to non-coder app developers. Having zero technical background no longer stops an idea from becoming more than an idea.

You still have full control over every decision, up to whatever point you want that control.

1. What you want your app to do
2. How a screen should look
3. What happens when a user taps a button or swipes left/right

What changes is where those designs are executed, and how all of the programming direction is injected into your app.

Additionally, vibe coding utterly changes time-to-market, the amount of time it takes to go from an idea to something real people can actually use. You're able to iterate on and test app versions in a matter of minutes as opposed to weeks. This makes you competitive with other app developers off the jump, no matter how solo or small your dev studio might be.

Vibe coding for mobile apps

Most of the attention on AI-generated software has gone toward web prototypes and internal tools, and for good reason: Those are the easiest things for an AI model to produce. Mobile apps are a much different challenge.

Generating a webpage isn’t the same as generating a mobile app. A native mobile app is built to run directly on a mobile operating system like iOS or Android, which affects how the app can interact with the device and how it can be distributed.

This is where the category gets confusing for anyone evaluating tools. Not every AI app builder produces the same type of app. Some generate web-based experiences, while others can produce native mobile apps. That distinction can affect things like access to device features, performance, and how the app is published, so it’s important to understand what your builder actually produces.

Thunkable’s AI Builder is designed specifically for building native iOS and Android apps. You can generate an app with AI, continue customizing and testing it, and then publish it to the Apple App Store or Google Play.

What vibe coding really requires from you

Prompting away technical app building doesn’t remove the important judgment calls for you. This is your app, through and through.

You still have to decide what the app should actually do, in what order a user should see and experience things, and whether a generated screen actually serves the person using it or just looks cool and you want it there for that reason.

AI models are good at producing a plausible first version, and FAST. They are not good at knowing whether that version solves your users' actual problems, for the simple reason they don't know your existing or ideal users the way that you do.

To that end, testing is also still fully your job. A generated feature that works in a preview can still behave differently on a real device, under a real signal, in a real user's hands. Vibe coding speeds up the building part of the cycle that gets you to the testing portion fast. It does not remove the part where you check the result against the reality before you ship it.

What vibe coding with Thunkable looks like

In practice, vibe coding an app on Thunkable starts with a chat like other vibe code builders:

1. You describe the app you want to build, and Thunkable's AI Builder generates the logic, screens, and other designs and features you ask for.
2. Keep prompting: change colors, add banners, or decide when and where pop-ups should appear.
3. If you or a teammate knows how to code, you can switch to the block editor, which lets you build logic visually by connecting labeled pieces instead of typing, or the code editor, for writing code directly, any time you want more control over a specific piece of logic.

With Thunkable, you’re building a testable native mobile app from the beginning. You can start with a prompt, continue refining the app with AI, blocks, or code, test it on a real device, and ultimately publish it.

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