Vibe Drift
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Vibe drift is when you start an AI coding session on-task and end it three hours later having rewritten your entire auth system for no reason. The AI suggested an improvement, you said sure, it cascaded. Your PR is now unreviewable.
Real Talk
Vibe drift describes scope creep in AI-assisted coding sessions, where small suggestions compound into unfocused sprawling changes. Caused by AI's tendency to propose 'improvements' outside the requested scope, and humans' tendency to accept them. Mitigated by tight scope prompts, reviewing diffs before accepting, and enforcing per-PR scope limits.
When You'll Hear This
"Classic vibe drift — I asked for a bug fix and got a rewrite." / "Scope that prompt tighter or you'll get vibe drift again."
Related Terms
AI Pair Programming
AI pair programming is pair programming where your partner is an AI.
Scope Creep
Scope creep is when a simple feature request slowly grows into rebuilding the entire application.
Vibe Coding
Vibe coding is writing software by vibes — you describe what you want to an AI, it writes the code, and you just... vibe.
Vibe Regression
Vibe regression is when the AI 'fixes' one thing and silently breaks two others. The tests it didn't know to run now fail.