I’m a Normie. Can Normies Really Vibe Code?

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Chris ColinThe Big StoryMay 18, 2026 6:00 AMI’m a Normie. Can Normies Really Vibe Code? Apparently anyone can vibe code anything these days.

So Claude and I tried to make a database for tracking the petty grievances of the masses. Illustration: Yann Bastard Save this story Save this storyThe dog that ushered me into the technological future was “low and thick. ” That’s all my mother registered before it T-boned her in a city park earlier this year: dense, heavy, and traveling fast enough to fracture her right tibia.

Technical Details

But enough about her. Let’s discuss what this set in motion in my life: Having successfully learned nothing about coding for two and a half decades, I would soon be attempting my very first software development project. If you’ve ever had a low and thick dog break your mom’s shin bone, you know the stream of lesser indignities that follows.

Case in point: the hours my father spent navigating phone trees, trying to manage my mom’s medical care. Are frustrating telephone calls significant in the grand scheme of things? But that stupid dog had chosen a technologically interesting moment to do its thing.

For the first time in history, a problem no longer needed to be serious to bring serious tools to bear. For as long as Silicon Valley has been selling a frictionless tomorrow, we ordinary people have been its passive shoppers—scrolling the App Store, hoping someone has gone to the trouble of building whatever we need. Enter AI and its democratizing sidekick: vibe coding.

Industry Implications

If the promise is real, suddenly we can build our own apps, as niche and trifling as we please, with zero programming skills. We merely gesture toward whatever irks us and a constellation of large language models, code generators, and development environments will click their heels. Illustration: Yann BastardNiche and trifling?

Where others vibe code résumé reviewers and inventory trackers and automated assistants to boost their work productivity, I had a different target in mind. Over the past couple years I’ve grown particularly fixated, personally and professionally, on what the policy world calls sludge: the rising tide of tiny administrative obligations that increasingly seems to define modern existence—and corrode our ability to get anything done. The hassle of dealing with insurance, or connecting that insurance to your doctor, or staying on top of airline miles, or navigating your kid’s school portal.

The steps required to dispute a charge, or unsubscribe from a streaming service you forgot you had. Each of these feels like its own discrete assault on our time. But they’re not discrete.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.