In the last two years, AI has changed the way many people write, code, and think. But now, a new practice of using AI to operate businesses through natural language is emerging.
From Vibe-Coding to Vibe-Operating
Vibe-coding, first coined by the legendary AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, is a software development practice that uses LLMs or AI to generate code with natural language. It is a term that comes from the reality that many developers are experiencing today: instead of writing code line by line, they describe what they want, and the AI builds it. This is already common with tools like Cursor, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Codex, and more.
Vibe-operating builds on this idea but applies it to the operations of an entire business. You describe business outcomes, and the AI executes them for you. Whether that is sending a marketing email, making business decisions, analyzing customer data, asking for business ideas, or booking meetings, it is all done with a prompt.
You Might Already Be Vibe-Operating
The truth is, many people are already vibe-operating without realizing it.
If you have ever asked ChatGPT to generate business ideas, Notion AI to summarize a market report, or had an AI schedule meetings across multiple calendars, you have participated in vibe-operating. These small automations are no longer something new, they are quietly becoming the new interface for work.
In more advanced use cases, businesses now run parts of their operations through AI agents. A startup founder might delegate competitive research to an AI tool that scours websites, compiles findings, and suggests positioning. In recruiting, AI can scan resumes, rank candidates, and schedule interviews from a single workflow. I have also seen successful business founders using multiple LLMs at the same time, switching between models for different tasks (Grok for creativity, Claude for code, and ChatGPT for research). All of these are examples of vibe-operating in action.
Quick disclaimer, though: using traditional RPA or software to run a workflow does not count as vibe-operating. Vibe-operating refers to automating business processes in which AI makes decisions for you (big or small), not just executing preprogrammed steps.
Is Vibe-Operating Actually Good?
Is it a bad thing to do vibe-operating? Some might consider this cutting corners, especially given the reputation of vibe-coded code being buggy or vulnerable. But it has proven to increase the productivity of everyday developers significantly. GitHub's own studies found that "developers using Copilot completed tasks nearly twice as fast." And that's the point: most people are not elite engineers. For the worker or founder (average or elite), vibe-coding and vibe-operating can bridge the gap between idea and execution faster than ever.
The benefits of vibe-operating are growing. Companies are seeing real gains in productivity, cost savings, and speed of execution. Omega Healthcare, for example, uses AI to process billing documents, saving over 15,000 employee hours each month. Infosys recently reported reducing manpower needs by up to 35% through internal AI automation.
But, of course, I have to stress that the practice is not perfect. One of the major risks of vibe-operating is reliability. When agents operate autonomously, there is a non-trivial chance that something breaks or behaves unexpectedly. Current systems like Manus AI are powerful but are still prone to looping errors or crashes in production. In reality, even state-of-the-art AI agents only score around 60% accuracy at most when tested on AI agent benchmarks (WebArena), as of mid-2025 (see here for benchmark results).
But I am confident that these issues will be mitigated soon. For now, vibe-operating works best when used with intent and caution. Otherwise, using them without reviewing the results might introduce trouble.
How to Start Vibe-Operating: A Simple Guide
You don't need a full AI team or custom software to start vibe-operating. In fact, you can vibe-operate using tools that are already publicly available and free. Here, I want to share the top 10 vibe-operating workflows I personally think are useful and easy to set up. First, here are the 5 I personally use:
- We use Notion as our team workspace. Notion AI helps to automatically manage the workspace, draft documents, and act as our external brain.
- Use ChatGPT and Perplexity to perform market research and generate a report for you. Save the prompt and do that once in a while to keep yourself informed of the market trend.
- Use Manus AI to translate documents/presentations from English to Japanese. Original documents in, translated documents out, simple as that.
- Use Manus AI and ChatGPT to create a list of investor profiles that fit our values, stage, and geography, including check size, thesis focus, and contact info.
- Use n8n to create a workflow that crawls RSS sites and uses ChatGPT to summarize and keep track of the latest news/information. In addition, you can rewrite the news titles to avoid clickbait headlines.
And another five I find useful from other resources:
- Recruiting intake that parses resumes, applies a rubric, generates structured notes, and schedules screens using n8n workflow.
- Create a competitive watcher with n8n that crawls target sites, summarizes changes, and updates a battle card page.
- Board deck helper that fetches metrics, drafts slides, and commentary, then opens tasks for missing numbers. Use Actions to write to Slides or Drive with OpenAI API.
- Inbox triage that categorizes emails and drafts replies using LangChain (executive-ai-assistant).
- Meeting prep and recap that compiles agendas, notes, and action items, then sends summaries to Slack (Zapier template).
I am sure there are more useful workflows out there that suit your specific needs (read this too to kick-start your automation). At the end of the day, it is up to you to identify your own business problems and use AI to solve them effectively.
Closing Remarks
What vibe-operating represents is a shift in how we operate a company. AI no longer stops at suggestions. It plans, decides, and acts through your tools. This lets us move from controlling the computer itself to prompting and approving AI's actions. The operating system for business is becoming language itself.
As the tools improve and as people build better frameworks for reliability and safety, we'll see more businesses built entirely on this paradigm. Instead of hiring teams right away, founders might start with a stack of AI agents. Instead of managing dozens of SaaS dashboards, operators might control their companies through a single conversational layer.
You too can start vibe-operating today. Pick repetitive and small business processes, build workflows, validate the outcome, and use the time you saved to scale your company.