this new era of vibecoding has subtly changed my relationship with my computer. I already have a habit of running almost exclusively open-source software on my void-linux box, and open-source software is fundamentally vibe-codable. encounter a bug? need a new feature? not sure what config option to use and don’t want to spend an hour reading the manpage? clone the repo and vibecode it. vibecoding changes open-source from something you file issues against into something you directly adapt.

open-source projects are, in many ways, the perfect place to loose a vibecoding agent.

1. you often use projects that are written in languages that you don’t know - rather than taking a weekend to learn the basics of go, just have the agent make your changes.
2. the code never needs to be seen by anyone else - you don’t have to go through a peer-review by your judgy coworkers. it can be a pile of vibecoded garbage and it doesn’t matter - so long as it does what you need it to do. (you don’t read the codebase of every open-source project you use, do you?)
3. if you do choose to contribute back to the repository, you have maintainers who will make sure that the code is not a pile of vibecoded garbage.

there are definitely dangers - if the tool you are vibecoding has access to sensitive information or subsystems on your computer it could potentially do some damage. follow standard practices: isolate your test environment, ensure you have backups, maybe run a git diff and ask a different agent what the changes are and if they are possibly harmful. but I don’t think these are show-stoppers.

assuming you already know the basic vibecoding loop, here’s a more concrete workflow that’s worked well for me:

setup (once per project):

1. clone the repo
2. start up your choice of agent, and have it generate its own AGENTS.md file.
3. before diving into vibecoding, figure out how to build the project.
4. (optional) symlink your newly built binary into your PATH somewhere - perhaps as originaltoolname-vibe or originaltoolname-dev
5. go run your new -vibe binary somewhere and verify it works

fix it:

1. before touching code, have the agent write a bug report or feature request as if you were going to file it; this issue becomes the spec
2. (optional) go submit the bug report / feature request to the repository’s issue tracker.
3. use the agent to solve that issue.
4. build and test using your -vibe binary (taking necessary precautions as needed - back up your data, maybe make a new isolated test environment).

after it works (optional):

1. start using the -vibe binary instead of the official one. or, drop the -vibe and put it earlier in your PATH. or, if you’re feeling very daring, replace the original binary with your new vibecoded one.
2. (optional) push your changes up and open a pull-request that solves your own bug/feature.

since I started defaulting to this workflow I’ve had several success stories. I don’t know go, and I certainly didn’t know anything about the kopia codebase, but I opened a pr to solve my own issue. the maintainer did a good amount massaging, but in the end it got merged!

I know python, but I was not about to familiarize myself with the entire vdirsyncer codebase in order to fix some of the bugs I was running into. but I could sure point an agent at it, resulting in four merged prs.

I do know bash, but using an agent made these two pull requests to pdiffjson absolutely trivial - it turned what might have been a half hour of effort into two minutes.

open-source has always let you reshape the code to your needs - but usually the barrier to entry was high enough that this was mostly just a theoretical reassurance. vibecoding turns it into a practical reality.

“I wish this tool did X” is now an afternoon project, not a research project.

try fixing one of your own issues before opening a ticket. you might end up fixing someone else’s too.

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future work: I’ve really been into the idea of nix-ifying my whole computer and letting a vibecoding agent loose on the whole thing, since if it f*cks the whole thing I can just use nix to rollback anyways 💫