Vibe working

Applying the vibe coding pattern to knowledge work: you describe what you need, AI produces the email, report, slide deck, or research summary, and you send it along without thoroughly reviewing the substance.

Vibe working extends the vibe coding dynamic beyond software into everyday knowledge work. A manager asks AI to draft a quarterly business review, skims the polished result, and presents it to leadership. A consultant asks AI to write a competitive analysis, checks that it looks professional, and emails it to the client. The blank page disappears quickly, and the output reads with enough confidence that the sender feels comfortable forwarding it. The risk emerges when someone downstream asks a follow-up question and the sender realizes they cannot defend the claims, explain the methodology, or identify where the data came from.

Builder example

Builders of workplace AI tools should design for review, because vibe working reliably produces documents the sender has not truly understood. The most effective intervention is making review easy and natural: highlighting claims that need sourcing, flagging unsupported statistics, and surfacing the sections most likely to break under scrutiny.

Common confusion: Using AI to draft workplace documents is efficient and often beneficial. The problem is specific to skipping the review step, sending AI output as if you had verified it when you only verified that it looked polished.