Claude Code chief Boris Cherny seeks professional alternative to "vibe coding" term

Boris Cherny, the chief behind Anthropic’s juggernaut tool Claude Code, is reportedly ready to move past the term "vibe coding."

Despite the phrase being named Word of the Year by Collins Online Dictionary in 2025, Cherny told Business Insider on Wednesday that the term has become a bit too "glib" for a sector now churning out millions of lines of mission-critical code and raking in billions in revenue.

Originally coined by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, the term was meant to describe the new paradigm of building software using AI agents and natural language.

Cherny, who famously claimed that Claude Code has "solved" coding for him, is now actively searching for a more professional alternative.

While Anthropic’s internal documentation currently leans toward "agentic coding tool" or "AI-powered coding assistant," Cherny feels these lack the cultural resonance of the original phrase.

Even Karpathy’s other suggestion, "agentic engineering," has yet to catch on with the same fervour. In a bid to find a replacement that sticks, Cherny has invited the tech community to tweet their ideas directly to him or route them through reporters.

The search for a new nomenclature comes at a time of massive scaling for Anthropic. During the company’s Code with Claude conference, Cherny announced a significant expansion of compute capacity through a new partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

This deal aims to provide the infrastructure necessary to support the increasing complexity of AI-driven development.

As the industry matures from experimental "vibes" into high-stakes engineering, Cherny appears determined to ensure the language used to describe the field matches its technical and economic impact.