For Vibe Coders: Next.js in the Age of AI

"One of my dreams is that the next Facebook or the next Snapchat will be created by someone that has not have to gone through all this education or has had to develop all these connections and hire all these bright people. Really, it can be one girl in Africa. It can be a boy in Bangladesh." — Guillermo Rauch, 2015

Guillermo Rauch's dream is coming true—but not quite how he expected.

The Vibe Coding Revolution

What Is Vibe Coding?

Former Tesla AI lead Andrej Karpathy coined the term:

"We've entered an era of 'vibe coding,' a mode where developers 'fully give in to the vibes,' describing what they want, accepting autogenerated diffs, and watching functional code materialize in real time."

You're no longer writing code line by line. You're:

The Tools

v0 by Vercel: In 2023, Vercel released v0—an AI tool that creates web applications from natural language prompts. It won a 2025 Webby Award for developer tools.

The tool translates natural-language prompts into production-grade React/Tailwind code, slashing design-engineering turnaround. Over 100 million user interactions. 3.5+ million users.

In May 2025, Vercel shipped the v0-1.0-md model through an OpenAI-compatible API, putting generative UI just a curl command away from IDEs like Cursor and Codex.

Claude Code: Anthropic's AI coding assistant that can write, edit, and understand entire codebases. You're likely reading this because you use it.

Cursor: An AI-first code editor built on VS Code. It understands your project context and generates code accordingly.

Lovable: Formerly GPT Engineer. Generates full web applications from descriptions.

Bolt: StackBlitz's AI tool for building web apps in the browser.

The Numbers

In mid-2025, a Y Combinator poll found that a full quarter of startups say 95% of their codebases are now generated by AI tools.

"That tidal-wave number signals a mass departure from hand-writing every function toward simply prompting the machine and shipping results."

Why Next.js Is the Default AI Framework

The Stack v0 Uses

When you ask v0 to build something, it generates:

This isn't coincidence. It's strategic alignment.

Why This Stack?

  1. Convention over configuration — Less to explain to an AI
  2. File-based structure — Easy to navigate and modify
  3. Component architecture — Modular, easy to generate and compose
  4. Full-stack in one — API routes, database access, UI in one project
  5. Vercel deployment — One command to ship

Guillermo's Vision

"AI is a tool for unlocking developers' creativity. By automating boilerplate coding, AI frees developers to focus on bigger creative challenges."

His mission: expanding the pool of potential builders from 5 million developers to over 100 million people worldwide.

What AI Can Do with Next.js

Excellent At:

1. Boilerplate generation

2. Pattern application

3. UI composition

4. Refactoring

Good At (With Guidance):

1. Business logic

2. Performance optimization

3. Testing

What AI Struggles With

Where You Must Understand the Framework

1. Rendering strategy decisions

AI can implement any rendering strategy, but it can't decide which is right for your use case. You need to know:

2. Hydration debugging

AI can generate code that causes hydration mismatches. It often can't diagnose why. You need to understand:

3. Architecture decisions

AI will generate whatever you ask for. It won't tell you:

4. Security

AI might generate insecure patterns without warning:

5. Performance at scale

AI optimizes for what you ask, not for what you need:

The Vibe Coder's Workflow

1. Describe, Don't Dictate

Instead of:

"Create a button component with onClick handler that calls handleClick"

Try:

"I need a button that submits a form and shows a loading state while the server processes it"

Let the AI decide implementation details. Focus on what you want, not how to build it.

2. Review Critically

Every AI-generated change should answer:

3. Iterate with Context

AI tools work best with context. Provide:

4. Test What Matters

AI can generate tests, but you decide what to test:

5. Ship Incrementally

Deploy early and often. Catch issues in preview environments before production.

The Knowledge You Can't Outsource

First Principles That AI Can't Replace

1. How the web works

2. How React works

3. How Next.js renders

4. How to debug

The Paradox of AI-Assisted Development

The better you understand the fundamentals, the better you can leverage AI. AI amplifies your knowledge—it doesn't replace it.

The Future: The Generative Web

Guillermo's Prediction

"We're heading towards a generative web where applications are created on demand for individual users, potentially making traditional, downloadable software obsolete."

Imagine:

What This Means for Developers

You're not competing with AI. You're collaborating with it.

The developers who thrive will:

  1. Understand fundamentals deeply — To guide AI effectively
  2. Develop taste — To judge AI output quality
  3. Focus on problems — Let AI handle implementation
  4. Learn continuously — As the tools evolve rapidly

The Vibe Coder's Checklist

Before deploying AI-generated Next.js code, verify:

Key Takeaways

Sources