The State of Vibe Coding in 2026

Has Vibe Coding Become a Real Workflow?

Yes, and the tooling has matured significantly. What started as experimental “let the AI figure it out” coding has evolved into distinct workflows with clear trade-offs. The core value proposition remains unchanged: dramatically faster prototyping, reduced iteration costs, and the ability to build internal tools without the rigorous testing production applications demand. The difference now is that practitioners have mapped out which tools work for which contexts—and the ecosystem has expanded to support coding from virtually anywhere.

What’s notable is who’s paying attention. Highly technical founders and CEOs—people who’ve built production systems at scale—are recognizing vibe coding as a genuine productivity multiplier:

Vibe coding is real

— Jake Lazaroff (@justjake) December 2025

I think programming as we know it is dead, and that's a good thing. I think creation, as we haven't known for a great many years, is more alive than ever.

— Jake Lazaroff (@justjake) December 2025

This isn’t early-adopter hype. The engineers building developer tools are using these workflows themselves—and shipping faster because of it.

Two Distinct Approaches Have Emerged

The vibe coding landscape has bifurcated into two primary workflows, each optimized for different contexts:

App-Based Coding uses Claude Code or ChatGPT mobile apps directly. This approach works without setup, secrets, or local environment configuration. Each session spawns its own branch, providing complete isolation. If the output doesn’t meet expectations, the branch is simply discarded. This covers roughly 90% of vibe coding use cases: editing files, refactoring code, fixing bugs, and building features that don’t require third-party integrations.

Terminal-Based Coding connects mobile devices to development machines, enabling full access to the file system, MCP servers, browser automation, and API integrations. Tools like Tailscale with Termius, VibeTunnel.sh, and Takopi (a Telegram-based interface) bridge the gap between mobile input and desktop capability.

The decision point is straightforward: if the task requires secrets, API connections, or browser interaction, terminal access is necessary. For everything else, the apps provide a cleaner experience.

The App-Based Workflow

Using Claude Code or ChatGPT apps for development offers several advantages that make them the default choice for most tasks:

Zero friction onboarding. No SSH configuration, no secret management, no environment setup. Open the app and start prompting.

Natural parallelization. Spinning up multiple sessions is trivial—each runs on its own branch with complete isolation. Managing ten concurrent tasks becomes feasible.

Full transparency. All changes are visible in GitHub. Pull requests appear automatically. The review process remains unchanged.

No permission fatigue. Unlike terminal-based tools that frequently request confirmation, app-based workflows run without interruption.

The limitation is access. These apps cannot connect to MCP servers, query proprietary APIs, or access data that isn’t in the repository. For internal tools that rely on external systems, this becomes a blocker.

Terminal Access from Mobile

When full system access is required, several tools have emerged to bridge mobile devices to development environments:

• Tailscale + Termius: The established approach—VPN to your network, SSH to your machine
• VibeTunnel.sh: Purpose-built for forwarding Claude Code sessions
• Takopi: Telegram bot interface for terminal commands
• Omnara: Mobile-first development environment
• Happy.engineering: Another mobile-to-terminal bridge
• CodeRemote, YoloCode, Claudia, Conductor: Emerging alternatives with varying feature sets
• Cursor Agents: IDE-integrated approach
• Kisuke, Tonkotsu, Terragon Labs: Tools at various stages of development

When evaluating these tools, the details matter. VibeTunnel makes session creation easy and supports multi-device access, but clipboard pasting can be clunky on smaller screens like the iPhone 13 Mini. Termius offers robust SSH access but requires repeated tmux reconnection—a friction point that adds up over many sessions. Each tool makes different trade-offs between setup complexity, daily ergonomics, and feature depth.

The terminal workflow enables capabilities the apps cannot match: running commands interactively, connecting to Chrome for browser automation, accessing local services like email via CLI tools. The trade-off is complexity. Only one repository and branch are active at a time (unless using git worktrees or multiple clones), and permission prompts interrupt the flow unless configuration is adjusted.

The Task Management Gap

One limitation spans both approaches: sessions are ephemeral. Claude Code on the web doesn’t maintain task state across sessions, which creates a coordination problem for longer-running work.

Three patterns have emerged to address this:

External issue trackers. Linear, GitHub Issues, or similar tools serve as the source of truth. Sessions pull tasks from these systems and push updates back.

File-based tracking. A .tickets/ directory in the repository, with each ticket as a markdown file. Simple, version-controlled, and visible to the AI.

Lightweight libraries. Tools like Python task managers or experimental approaches like the Beads library attempt to bridge the gap programmatically.

A simple Python task manager for vibe coding sessions

— sockdrawermoney (@sockdrawermoney) December 2025

The Beads library has generated discussion, with some questioning its implementation approach:

Concerns about the Beads library implementation

— Peter Steinberger (@steipete) December 2025

None of these solutions are seamless yet. The community continues experimenting with approaches that maintain context across sessions while preserving the flexibility that makes vibe coding effective.

Choosing the Right Tool

The decision framework is context-dependent:

Scenario	Recommended Approach
Quick edits, refactoring, isolated features	App-based (Claude/ChatGPT)
Tasks requiring API keys or secrets	Terminal access
Browser automation or scraping	Terminal with Chrome connection
Managing multiple parallel tasks	App-based (branch isolation)
Debugging with file system access	Terminal access
Prototyping without setup overhead	App-based

What This Means for Development Teams

Vibe coding has reached the point where it’s no longer experimental—it’s a legitimate workflow choice. Teams that embrace it can:

• Reduce prototyping cycles from days to hours
• Build internal tooling that previously wasn’t worth the investment
• Enable development from anywhere with an internet connection
• Parallelize work across multiple AI sessions

The tooling will continue evolving. The patterns described here represent the current state, not the final form. What’s clear is that the workflow has moved beyond novelty into practical utility for specific categories of work.