From Vibe Coding to Coding Partner

Note: Written with the help of my research and editorial team 🙂 including: (Google Gemini, Google Notebook LM, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity.ai, Claude.ai and others as needed)

For the past couple of years, I’ve written and spoken a lot about my AI discovery journey — explaining what AI really is. Not magic, but a system, a platform, a powerful set of tools. What I haven’t talked about much is how that journey has changed the way I code. This is that story.

The Vibe Coding Phase

Just a short eight months ago, I was deep in what I now call my vibe coding phase — that uncharted space where I wasn’t sure if I was building with AI or just experimenting with it. Every session felt like a jam session: me, a text editor, a model that sometimes understood me, and a lot of coffee. The results? A strange mix of amazing exhilaration and chaos.

It was raw. Messy. Human. Back then, AI was clever but clumsy — a creative sidekick, not a collaborator. It was like coding with a friend who had great ideas but no sense of timing. . I was copy and pasting, using VSCode, and later Bolt, Claude Code, and others. Just learning by doing. Sometimes it nailed the rhythm; sometimes, it completely lost the beat. Yet under all that noise, I could feel something taking shape — the beginning of a new kind of development energy.

Me, Myself, and My Code

Before that, my coding had always been solitary. I lived in that beautiful space where you understood every line because you wrote every line — every bug, every fix, every late-night breakthrough. It had its own quiet rhythm: just me, my thoughts, and the comforting glow of the IDE (mostly Visual Studio Code, though I’ve flirted with others).

Sure, IntelliSense existed — a loyal secretary catching my syntax slips — but it was all still manual. If you wanted to build, you did it the hard way. That level of control taught me craftsmanship and intuition. The trade‑off, though, was energy. I didn’t realize how much of it went into tasks AI could later handle with ease.

The Moment It Clicked

Fast‑forward to one unforgettable night — 1:47 a.m. My wife had pinged twice to tell me to come to bed, but my curiosity refused to let go. My screen glowed softly, a half‑finished function blinking like it was daring me to finish. I sighed, leaned back, and typed to my AI assistant:

“Can you help me figure this out?”

The response appeared instantly — clean, clear, and, to my surprise, insightful. It didn’t just fix the issue; it explained why my own logic faltered. That’s when it clicked. This wasn’t the same vibe coding I’d been doing for months. Something had changed. For the first time, I wasn’t talking to a tool — I was collaborating with a partner.

That late‑night realization made me look back and see how far I’d come from those early, solo nights of code and caffeine.

Vibe Coding — The Early Sparks

When the first AI coding assistants arrived — GitHub Copilot, TabNine, those early versions that hinted at promise — I dove in like a kid unwrapping a new gadget. It felt magical, until it didn’t.

AI would write snippets that looked smart but broke three lines later. It suggested fixes that worked “in theory,” not in my repo. Still, something about that unpredictability kept me hooked. Each miss taught me to communicate more clearly, to guide the AI rather than expect perfection. We were improvising — still learning the same song, just out of sync.

Then, almost overnight, everything changed.

The Moment Everything Changed

In the past few weeks, the ecosystem has exploded: Google Antigravity. AWS Kiro. Microsoft Foundry. And my absolute favorite — Cursor.

Cursor doesn’t just understand my code; it understands me. It remembers past logic, anticipates my patterns, and even suggests tests that align with how I build. It’s the first time AI has felt less like autocomplete and more like intuition.

Now, when I talk to Cursor, I don’t prompt — I converse. It’s a rhythm that feels natural. Fluid. Productive. The vibe phase has evolved into something else entirely: genuine partnership.

Building with a True Partner

Today, I spend far less time wrestling with syntax and far more designing how things should feel. That’s been the biggest shift — from coder to creator, from managing details to shaping direction.

AI now handles roughly 60% of the scaffolding, freeing me to focus on architecture, flow, and user experience — the soul of the build. It’s made my work feel more human again because I can zoom out, connect the dots, and stay anchored to purpose instead of process. Creativity, once buried under deadlines, is now front and center.

Looking Back — and Forward

If you’d told me two years ago that I’d call code “a collaboration with a machine,” I would’ve laughed. But now, it feels inevitable — and honestly, thrilling.

The past 18 months taught me how to trust this new creative partner. The last three weeks proved that trust was justified. I’ve crossed the line from vibe coding to having a true code partner. And like any great partnership, it’s made me sharper, faster, and infinitely more curious.

The code compiles because of AI — but the vision? That’s always human. Together, this blend feels unstoppable.

What How and Do

I am now focusing on “the what”, collaborating/brainstorming on the best way to figure HOW, and have a partner to doing the Do– Amazing! AMAZING HOW technology changed in just 6-months!

Beyond Just Coding

This shift hasn’t only changed how I code — it’s changed how I think. Once you experience real partnership with AI, you start to see it everywhere. I now use AI for brainstorming, writing, strategy — anything that helps ideas take shape faster.

Still, coding feels special. It’s ahead of every other AI application — faster, deeper, more seamless. Developers are the lucky ones living slightly in the future, seeing firsthand what true human‑machine collaboration looks like.

At this point, I don’t “use” AI anymore. I work with it. It’s not about automation; it’s about imagination — expanding what’s possible.

Every session feels like a new conversation, another experiment in co‑creation. And that’s the biggest takeaway from my journey: this wasn’t really about coding all along. It’s about learning how to build with curiosity, how to trust collaboration, and how to create alongside possibility itself.