We grew up thinking that work meant doing stuff.
Writing, designing, executing, refining.
But what if work, tomorrow, means something else entirely?
AI is changing our relationship with "doing.” It asks less of our hands, and more of our minds.
Less execution. More direction.
Less producing. More orchestrating.
Execution doesn’t disappear — it shifts. It becomes the final act in a process driven by vision, intent, and clarity.
In the beginning, there was coding
The shift started quietly, when tools like Bolt and Lovable launched. Platforms that let you build software without writing a single line of code.
In January 2023, OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy tweeted:
“Right now, the hottest new programming language is English.”
That was the birth of a new mindset: vibe coding.
Describe the app you imagine. Explain how it should behave. Let the AI handle the logic, structure, and code.
You get an idea, spin up a prototype in minutes, test it, tweak it, ship it.
Vibe coding is already rewriting the rules for startups, product teams, and solo founders.
New products — even entire companies — are being launched in days.
And that begs the question: if software can build itself, do we still need developers like we used to?
Vibe Everything
What started in coding is spreading fast — to design, marketing, writing, and beyond.
A new approach is emerging: less hands-on craft, more high-impact direction.
Here’s what it looks like.
Vibe Design
As Jacob Nielsen recently pointed out, when anyone can generate an interface, the only thing that matters is how it makes you feel.
That’s the core of vibe design: it’s not about pixels, it’s about experience.
It’s saying: “Make it warmer. More human. A little more playful.”
And watching AI translate those feelings into layout, color, typography, and animation.
Designers aren’t stuck inside static tools anymore. They prototype real experiences in hours, test them in real time, and iterate instantly. Design becomes fast, fluid, and alive.
This isn’t automation. This is liberation.
From technical bottlenecks. From rigid tools. From old job titles.
Vibe design frees you to focus on what matters: emotion, story, and meaning.
Vibe Marketing
Greg Isenberg recently gave us a glimpse into the future of marketing. Spoiler: it’s already here.
A solo marketer, with the right AI stack, can now do in two days what used to take an entire agency six weeks. Personalized creative, real-time multichannel campaigns, dozens of A/B tests, instant data interpretation, all without touching a single line of code.
Speed goes up. Costs drop. Barriers disappear.
AI agents can now manage CRM sequences, generate custom copy, run competitor analysis, launch automated funnels, and optimize in real time.
In this new world, traditional agencies will lose ground to lean micro-teams armed with hyper-specific tools. Thousands of one-purpose AI tools are coming — each one designed to do one thing flawlessly.
And marketers? They’ll become system architects. Not execution machines. Their real job? Asking better questions. Building sharper strategies. Unleashing creativity at scale.
Vibe Writing
We talked about this in our first After Work Live with Paolo: writing, too, is going vibe.
It’s not just about asking ChatGPT to do the writing.
It’s about training it to speak with your voice, your tone, your perspective.
It’s learning how to infuse your style, your story, your thinking into the prompt, and letting the AI handle the output.
The real value of writing is shifting from the “how” to the “why”. Not the mechanics, but the message. Not the grammar, but the guts.
Writing becomes a tool for discovery, positioning, storytelling.
And yes — for certain things, the human touch still matters. There will always be pieces you need to write with your own hands. But much of the rest? You just need to set the vibe.
Don’t change your job. Change how you work.
Of course, all this makes people nervous. Programmers say: vibe coding is buggy. Designers defend their originality. Copywriters insist: “We’re still better than the machines.”
And maybe today, that’s true. But not for long.
The technical limits of AI are shrinking by the day. What we’re seeing now is part of a bigger pattern — what Kevin Kelly calls the cycle of technological substitution:
“A robot can’t do my job.”
“Okay, maybe it can do some things — but not the important stuff.”
“Well, it still needs me to train it.”
“Fine, it does my old job. But honestly, that job was never made for humans anyway.”
“Now that AI handles the boring stuff, my role is way more interesting — and more valuable.”
That last step? That’s where vibe working begins.
A new way to create, decide, communicate, and build. Powered by AI, but led by humans.
You start with an idea, a challenge, a need. You use AI to speed up the execution. But you never give up control.
Seen like this, vibe working isn’t a buzzword.
It’s a point of no return.
Those who learn it will thrive. Those who don’t? They’ll fall behind.
The new rules of work
For you
Vibe working doesn’t require you to know everything.
It requires you to know exactly what you want.
It demands clarity, speed, inspiration.
You need to communicate intent, and quickly validate what gets built.
Train to set direction, not to do everything yourself.
Learn how to work with AI as a teammate, not a threat.
Get really good at writing inputs that drive powerful outputs.
And most of all: build a personal identity — a recognizable voice, a way of solving problems that people remember.
Spend your time where your value shines.
Let the machine handle the rest.
For your organization
If you want to survive, you need vibe workers inside your company now.
But here’s the thing: the bigger, more centralized, and more managerial your structure is, the harder it’ll be to make space for this shift.
Start small.
Empower your teams with the right tools and real autonomy.
Launch internal challenges to spot your vibe natives, the ones already working this way.
Bring in freelancers and AI-native creatives who live on the frontier. Let them work with your people and transfer skills.
Once, these people were outsiders.
Now, they’re the blueprint for what’s next.
Your job? Bring them in from the edge. Let them lead. And redesign your org before someone else does it for you.