Vibe Coding Is One Year Old. Here's What Actually Broke.

Andrej Karpathy coined the term "vibe coding" in February 2025. One year later, a wave of developers — indie hackers, SaaS builders, long-time contributors — are publicly burning out. Not from too little output. From too much of it, with no way to stop. This post is about what actually changed under the hood, backed by data. The productivity numbers are real. So is the problem. The 2025 DORA Report surveyed nearly 5,000 developers and found that 90% now use AI tools at work — up 14% from 2024. Over 80% say it has improved their productivity. Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey (49,000+ respondents) confirms the trend: AI adoption keeps climbing, with 84% using or planning to use AI tools, up from 76% in 2024. But in the same survey, positive sentiment toward AI tools dropped from 72% in 2024 to just 60% in 2025. More usage. Less enthusiasm. That gap is worth examining. The three stop signals that disappeared Before vibe coding, a typical dev day had a natural end: Signal What it use