Demo
Where did “vibe coding” come from?
Three questions asked in plain words and answered in SQL against api.scry.io on 14 September 2026: the earliest tweets that said “vibe coding”, the day it reached Hacker News, and the subreddits that argue about it. Every number on screen is the meter the API returned.
Transcript
The three exchanges as they appear in the film: the question as typed, the reading Scry made of it, the SQL it sent, the meters the API returned, and the rows that came back. Each timestamp seeks the film; each SQL block is the statement as sent, ready to copy.
0:01
who was talking about vibe coding before karpathy made it a thing?
Refined Earliest public uses of the exact phrase “vibe coding” on twitter.tweets before Karpathy’s 2 Feb 2025 tweet: handle, timestamp, likes, text, oldest first.
SELECT tweet_id, author_handle, original_timestamp, like_count, text FROM twitter.tweets WHERE hasAllTokens(search_text_lc, ['vibe', 'coding']) AND positionCaseInsensitive(search_text_lc, 'vibe coding') > 0 AND original_timestamp < '2025-02-02' ORDER BY original_timestamp ASC LIMIT 8
10,142,083 rows read 1.35 GB scanned 1.74 s wall twitter.tweets since 2006
| Handle | When (UTC) | Likes | Text |
|---|---|---|---|
| @growing_daniel | 2022-05-11 03:46 | 549 | @0xcccrrr vibe coding my way to pmf |
| @pepeloli1234 | 2022-07-28 00:14 | 0 | i guess R is the default summer vibe coding language |
| @ms_Eu4ria | 2022-09-01 18:19 | 0 | @Self_vibe Coding and programming |
| @neogoose_btw | 2023-07-29 08:51 | 3 | Doing no-voice pure vibe coding live stream https://t.co/dduZIbZyLF |
| @AnnaRMills | 2024-02-06 21:15 | 1 | @bitchinger @TimothyBramlett @emollick Ha, "vibe coding," aka poetry? |
| (no handle returned) | 2024-08-15 16:37 | 4 | okay I found myself wired in absolutely vibe coding. freaking came out of my zone… |
Found First hit 11 May 2022, two years and nine months before the tweet that named it. Nine tweets said it first.
0:19
when did it hit hacker news?
Refined First hackernews.items, stories and comments, containing “vibe coding”: id, author, timestamp, title, oldest first.
SELECT hn_id, original_author, original_timestamp, title FROM hackernews.items WHERE hasAllTokens(search_text_lc, ['vibe', 'coding']) AND positionCaseInsensitive(search_text_lc, 'vibe coding') > 0 ORDER BY original_timestamp ASC LIMIT 6
10,116,100 rows read 3.75 GB scanned 1.07 s wall hackernews.items 45.4 M rows since 2006
| hn_id | Author | When (UTC) | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 42913909 | rahimnathwani | 2025-02-03 01:27 | Vibe Coding |
| 42914104 | williamcotton | 2025-02-03 01:58 | (comment) |
| 42915050 | cadamsdotcom | 2025-02-03 04:38 | (comment) |
| 42919559 | rtribaldos | 2025-02-03 16:04 | (comment) |
| 42928458 | earth2mars | 2025-02-04 05:36 | Show HN: I vibe coded this blog |
| 42932275 | ayewo | 2025-02-04 13:48 | (comment) |
Found Hacker News picked it up the next day, in a story titled “Vibe Coding”. 9,614 items have said it since.
0:33
and where does reddit argue about it?
Refined Subreddits ranked by comments containing “vibe coding” in reddit.comments_popular, top 6 by count.
SELECT subreddit, count() AS n FROM reddit.comments_popular WHERE hasAllTokens(search_text_lc, ['vibe', 'coding']) AND positionCaseInsensitive(search_text_lc, 'vibe coding') > 0 GROUP BY subreddit ORDER BY n DESC LIMIT 6
1,538,013 rows read 260 MB scanned 1.91 s wall reddit.comments_popular 131.1 M rows since 2006
| Subreddit | Comments |
|---|---|
| r/ProgrammerHumor | 43 |
| r/technology | 28 |
| r/cscareerquestions | 14 |
| r/selfhosted | 9 |
| r/webdev | 8 |
| r/ExperiencedDevs | 7 |
Found The jokes lead: r/ProgrammerHumor out-comments r/technology. 144 subreddits carry the phrase.
Run it
Each statement above runs as written: send it as the body of a POST to https://api.scry.io/v1/scry/query with a key from the console. The corpora are live, so the counts have grown since 14 September 2026. What is served, the schema, and worked query examples are on this site.
curl -s https://api.scry.io/v1/scry/query \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $SCRY_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \ --data-binary @query.sql
Provenance
Queried api.scry.io on 14 September 2026; the numbers on screen are the returned meters. Row counts, bytes and timings are the read_rows, read_bytes and duration_ms fields of each response; the on-screen bill is the free tier. Quoted posts are public and shown as returned, under their authors’ handles. Film rendered 14 September 2026 at 1920 × 1080, 60 frames per second; the typing is animated, the pause after each run is the measured wall time.