Vibe coding for complete beginners: build a real game from zero
The short version: install a free editor, install an AI that works on real files, make a folder, and describe what you want in plain English. You get a working program you own, in about fifteen minutes, without writing a line of code. The skill is not the asking. It is the looking at what came back and saying what is wrong.
Vibe coding is building software by describing it instead of writing it. You say what you want, an AI writes the actual code, you look at the result, and you ask for changes. That is the whole of it.
The term comes from Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI, in February 2025, and he meant something specific by it. His own description of the practice included the line I accept all always, I don’t read the diffs anymore
. Not reading the code is not a side effect of vibe coding. It is the definition. That is genuinely fine for things you make for yourself, and there is a point where it stops being fine, which is the last section of this guide.
This guide builds a snake game, because a game is the fastest way to see that the thing actually works. Arrow keys, a score that counts up, food to chase, a proper game over. Everything below works exactly the same for a personal web page, a calculator, or a tool that renames your files.
It is not about one product
Every serious AI coding tool does this. GitHub Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude Code. The idea is identical in all of them: you describe, it writes. Pick a different one and the sentences you type do not change.
This guide uses Claude Code for one reason. It works directly on real files in a real folder on your machine, so what you end up with is a project sitting on your own hard drive, not something trapped inside a chat window you have to copy out of.
VS Code is free forever. Claude Code is not. It requires a Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise or Console account. The free claude.ai plan does not include it, and it is better to know that now than after two downloads. Nothing else in this guide costs anything.
Install VS Code, the window your project lives in
Go to code.visualstudio.com. The big button in the middle of the page already knows which computer you are on, so on Windows it reads Download for Windows. Click it, open the file that lands in your downloads folder, and click straight through with the default options. It asks you nothing difficult and takes about a minute.
VS Code is a code editor. You are not going to type code into it. You are going to use it as the window that shows you your folder, your files, and the box where you talk to the AI.
Install Claude Code, the thing that does the writing
Go to the Claude Code setup page and find the block of install commands. A command like this is just a shortcut: it fetches the program and installs it for you, so there is no download button to hunt for. Copy the line for your system, paste it into a terminal, and press enter.
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
Same page, same idea, different operating system. Everything after this point is identical on all three, so if you are on a Mac, nothing below will be different for you.
Make a folder
A folder is exactly what it sounds like: a named box that holds files. Everything you build lives inside one, and the AI only ever touches the folder you point it at, which is why this boring little step matters more than it looks.
Put it anywhere. Your desktop is completely fine. Give it a name with no spaces in it. Call it my-first-game.
Open that folder in VS Code
In VS Code, go to File › Open Folder, then choose the one you just made. If a message asks whether you trust the authors of the files in this folder, say yes. You made it thirty seconds ago and there is nothing in it.
The name of your folder now shows up in the strip down the left hand side. That strip is called the explorer, and it lists everything inside your folder. Right now it lists nothing. Keep half an eye on it, because in a few minutes a file is going to appear in it on its own.
Open the terminal
If you have never used one, a terminal is simply a box where you type commands instead of clicking buttons. It is not dangerous, and you are not going to break anything with the two commands in this guide.
In VS Code it lives in the Terminal menu, under New Terminal. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl and the backtick key, the small one above Tab on most keyboards. A panel opens along the bottom, and it is already pointed at your project folder.
Check the install actually worked
claude --version
If a version number comes back, you are ready. If it tells you the command was not found, close that terminal, open a fresh one, and try again. That fixes it nearly every time, because a terminal only notices a newly installed program when it starts up.
Start it, and answer the trust question
claude
That starts the AI inside your project folder. From this point on you are not typing commands any more. You are just talking to it.
The first time you run it in a new folder it stops and asks whether you trust this folder. That question is not a formality. It is telling you, before it does anything at all, that it is about to be able to read, change and run the files in here. That is exactly why you point it at a folder you made, instead of at your whole computer. This one you made a minute ago, so choose 1. Yes, I trust this folder.
Ask for what you want, in ordinary words
Here is the whole trick. Be specific about the things you actually care about, and say nothing at all about the things you do not. Name the thing you want, say how it should behave, and say how it should look. That is genuinely enough.
build me a snake game in a single html file, arrow keys to move, a score in the corner, and make it look clean and modern
Read that sentence again and notice there is not one technical word in it. No brackets, no syntax, nothing to memorise. Press enter and let it work.
It reads your folder, works out what it needs to write, and writes it. This takes a minute or two. Depending on your settings it may stop once and ask your permission before it creates a file. That is normal, and in a folder you made yourself, yes is the right answer.
Look at what it made
A file appears in the explorer on the left. In our run it was called snake.html, because that is the sensible name for a snake game, and it chose that on its own without being told. One file, which is exactly what was asked for.
Click it and you can see what it actually wrote. This is real code, a few hundred lines of it, and here is the honest part: you do not have to understand any of it today. But do look at it. Scroll through it. Get used to the shape of it. The people who get good at this are the ones who look.
Run it
An html file is just a web page, so you open it in a browser. Find the file in your folder and double click it, and it opens in whichever browser you already use.
Look at the address bar for a second. That is not a website address. That is the location of the file on your own computer. This thing is running entirely on your machine, with nothing uploaded anywhere.
And it plays. Arrow keys to move, a score in the corner that counts up, food to chase, and a proper game over when you hit the wall. That is a real game. It runs on your machine, it belongs to you, and it did not exist four minutes ago.
Change it by asking again
This is the part that actually matters, because the first answer is never the final answer, and it is where people give up when they should not. You do not start over. You do not open the code and go hunting for the colour. You go back to the same box and say what you want changed.
make the snake purple and add a game over screen with a restart button
Notice there is no instruction about which file to open or where to look. It goes back into that same file and edits it. It does not write you a second game and it does not start again from nothing. It finds the parts that have to change and changes those, which is exactly what you would want a person to do.
Then go back to your browser and reload the page: Ctrl + R, or F5, or the little circular arrow next to the address bar. A purple snake, a game over screen, a restart button. Same file, changed by asking.
The three things that will go wrong
They are the same three for everybody, so here they are in advance. Describing a problem is a completely legitimate instruction. It is not cheating and it is not a failure.
Open a fresh terminal and run it again. A terminal only picks up a newly installed program when it starts. If it still fails, run claude doctor, which prints installation and settings diagnostics without starting a session.
Tell it what you saw, in plain words, and paste in the error message if there is one. “The page is blank” and “the arrow keys scroll the page instead of moving the snake” are both perfectly good bug reports. It reads error messages.
Ask it to undo the last change. You do not need to know which file it touched or what it did. Say what you wanted, say what you got, and ask it to put things back.
Where vibe coding stops being fine
Keep the vibes for small things. A game, a personal page, a tool for yourself, something to learn on. For those, not reading the code costs you nothing you were going to have anyway.
The moment a thing takes payments, or holds other people’s information, or goes onto the internet for strangers to use, it needs somebody who reads every single line. That is not a rule invented to sound careful. Karpathy’s own definition was about not reading the code, and not reading the code is fine right up until it is not.
If you have already built something and put it online, the repairs worth doing first are in AI built your app in a day, hackers can break it in two: five fixes, copy-paste prompts, and the checklist to test them.
Once you are comfortable asking for a whole file, the same idea scales to a whole page: cloning any website with one command uses these exact two tools, and is honest about what the copy does and does not hand you.
And when you are ready to stop babysitting each request one at a time, the next thing to learn is the loop: stop prompting, build your first AI loop.
Questions people actually ask
What is vibe coding, exactly?
Building software by describing it instead of writing it. You say what you want in ordinary words, an AI writes the actual code, you look at the result, and you ask for changes. Andrej Karpathy coined the term in February 2025, and he meant something specific by it: you stop reading the code line by line and go with the vibes.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. Nothing in this guide requires you to write or read a line of code. You need to be able to type a sentence describing what you want, and to look at the result and say what is wrong with it. That second skill is the one that actually matters.
Is vibe coding free?
Partly. VS Code is free forever. Claude Code is not: it needs a paid Claude plan, and the free claude.ai account does not include it. Every other tool in this guide costs nothing. Other AI coding tools have their own free tiers if you want to try the idea without paying.
Does this only work with Claude Code?
No. GitHub Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT and Gemini all do the same thing and the idea is identical in every one of them. This guide uses Claude Code for one reason: it works directly on real files in a real folder on your machine, so what you end up with is a project you own rather than something trapped inside a chat window.
How long does it take?
About fifteen minutes end to end, and most of that is the two installs. Once the AI is running in your folder, the first working version of a small project takes a minute or two.
What do I do when the command is not found?
Close that terminal, open a fresh one, and try again. A terminal only picks up a newly installed program when it starts, so the very first check after an install is the one most likely to fail for no real reason. If it still fails, run claude doctor, which prints installation diagnostics without starting a session.
Is vibe coding safe for real projects?
For small things you make for yourself, yes. A game, a personal page, a tool only you use, something to learn on. The moment a thing takes payments, holds other people's information, or goes on the internet for strangers to use, it needs somebody who reads every line. That is not a rule invented to sound careful: not reading the code is the definition of the term.
Do I have to read the code it writes?
Not to make this work. But look at it anyway. If you never look, you learn nothing, and you will not notice the day it quietly does the wrong thing. Scrolling through a file you do not fully understand is still worth more than never opening it.
Want this built for you?
We write these memos because we build this stuff every day. If you want it working in your business instead of sitting on your reading list, that is literally our job.