I was vibe coding in November 2024, before the term was coined. I think that is about as early as anyone was doing it, so 1.25 years ago. Cursor added its "agentic" mode around then, I think, but before that there was just "accept all" without looking at changes repeatedly.

I shipped a small game that way (https://love-15.com/) -- one that I've wished to make for a long time but wouldn't have been worth building other wise. It's tiny, really, but very niche -- despite being tiny, I hit brick walls multiple times vibing it, and had to take a few brief breaks from vibing to get it unstuck.

Claude Code was a step change after that, along with model upgrades, about 9 months ago. That size project has been doable as a vibe coded project since then without hitting brick walls.

All this to say I really doubt most claims about having been vibe coding for more than 9-15 months.

To a describe a thing people had been doing since LLMs became available.

Yeah, I laughed when I saw the headline.

Now I expect to start seeing job postings asking for "3 years of experience vibe coding"