Vibe Coding vs Vibe Engineering

THIS WEEK’S STORY

Vibe Coding vs. Vibe Engineering

Lately, I’ve been thinking about two very different ways people use AI to build.

Some use AI to operate on the product itself; they drag, drop, prompt, and instantly see results. That’s vibe coding.

Others use AI to operate on the code behind the product; building systems, frameworks, and architectures that power the next generation of software. That’s vibe engineering.

At first glance, you might think they’re the same. The code creates the product, right?

Not really.

Vibe coding feels like art. You’re painting with AI brushes; your output is something users can touch and feel right away.

Vibe engineering feels like science. You’re designing the engine that makes everything run smoother, faster, better.

Both will win big.

Platforms like v0 and Lovable are pushing the limits of vibe coding; they make it possible to go from idea to app without ever touching a line of code. Meanwhile, companies like Vercel are redefining what engineering means in the age of AI — focusing on quality, performance, and clean interoperability.

In the long run, I believe the two worlds will merge.
The “vibe coders” will get more structured and opinionated.
The “vibe engineers” will become faster and more expressive.

But for now, it’s worth knowing where you stand.

Are you vibing with AI on the product, or engineering the code behind it?

Neither is better; they’re just different mindsets.
One moves fast and feels creative.
The other builds the rails the world will run on.

And when the two finally meet, that’s when the real magic happens.

HEADLINES

Cursor 2.0 is here and it’s massive!

Cursor 2.0 isn’t just a VSCode wrapper with ChatGPT anymore; it’s becoming a true agentic coding environment.

The update introduces a new Agents tab, letting you run multiple AI agents in parallel, each solving the same or different tasks so you can compare outputs and pick the best one.

They also launched a new in-house model, designed to be the fastest and most reliable for code generation and refactoring.

This is a glimpse of what’s next in AI-assisted development. Not just chatting with an assistant, but collaborating with multiple agents that build alongside you.

THIS WEEK’S TIP

How to Liquid Glass in React Native

Expo (the best framework to build mobile apps for ios and android with react native) has released ios native components for liquid glass UI (btw if you are note vibe coding your app in React Native + Expo, you really should).

I did some tests and it’s pretty cool.

First of all, to get that native glassy app menu, you can simply import NativeTabs in the /layout.tsx file like so, and the follow this super simple guide to configure the tabs (I recommend watching the video and following along, is very simple), If you have trouble, instruct an AI agent to edit the file for you.

import { NativeTabs, Icon, Label } from 'expo-router/unstable-native-tabs'

Then, you can go ahead and apply glass effects to other components as well by adding GlassView. If iOS26+ is not installed, it will fallback to regular “View”, so there’s no extra development needed.

Then just open Cursor, trigger the AI tab, and instruct the agent to stitch everything up and improve some components to look like the new native ios apps. You can paste apple’s official documentation into the agent so that it designs components as expected by the latest guidelines

QUICK HITS

• Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $8B for Open-Source Expansion: xAI secures massive funding to scale Grok models and challenge OpenAI’s commercial dominance. (TechStartups)

• Google Launches Gemini 2 for Genomics & Drug Discovery: New life sciences AI focuses on gene editing, protein modeling, and personalized medicine breakthroughs. (Google Research Blog)

• US–EU Roll Out Unified AI Audit Rules: Joint framework mandates transparency, risk reports, and red-teaming for foundation models starting 2026. (DW News)

• OpenAI + Microsoft Preview ChatGPT Workflow Agents: AI agents that handle tasks, emails, and scheduling—early users report major productivity boosts. (TechStartups)

• 53% of AI Startups Now Profitable: IDC/CB Insights report shows AI ventures hitting profitability fast, driven by LLM support tools and compliance automation. (SolutionsReview)

And That is all for this week!

See you next Saturday!

Filippo

Filippo Pietrantonio

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