Vibe Coding Museum

Vibe Coding: A Chronological Research Timeline

Last updated: September 16, 2025

This monograph traces the long arc from consumer website builders and no-code tools to the API moment, the emergence of AI-native development practices, the early coinage of “vibe coding,” and the resulting ecosystem and funding wave.

Timeline

  1. 2003–2013 (Antecedents) Consumer Site Builders & No-Code Rise

    Hosted CMS and consumer builders make publishing “feel” like software creation: Squarespace (2003/04), Wix (2006), Weebly (2006), and later Webflow (2013) expand what non-programmers can produce. These ecosystems establish expectations for instant feedback, layout control, and “describe then tweak” workflows that later resonate with vibe-coding patterns.

    Refs: Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Webflow, WYSIWYG timeline.

  2. 2020 LLMs as a Service Enter Builders’ Toolkits

    General-purpose LLM access over HTTP begins shaping developer practice. OpenAI’s API (2020) normalizes “call a model, get code/text,” seeding the next phase of toolmaking and agents.

    Ref: OpenAI API (2020).

  3. Spring 2023 The API Moment for Everyone

    Mar 1, 2023. OpenAI releases the ChatGPT and Whisper APIs, catalyzing a surge of AI-powered apps and code tools.

    May 2023. Google opens the PaLM API to developers (later succeeded by Gemini APIs). Anthropic expands Claude access via direct API and through Google Vertex AI. Collectively, these moves make “build with AI” mainstream.

    Refs: OpenAI ChatGPT/Whisper API, PaLM API, Claude on Vertex.

  4. Nov 24, 2023 Div-idy Ships the First Fully AI-Generated Code Web Builder

    Div-idy is identified as the first vibe-coding platform because, on Nov 24, 2023, it publicly demonstrated and shipped an end-to-end workflow in which natural-language prompts produced production-ready HTML/CSS/JS with no visual editor or manual coding required to reach a live page.

    Why this qualifies as “first”:

    • End-to-end, code-first. The path was prompt → generated code → publish, not a visual canvas or template tweaker.
    • Publicly dated milestone. Contemporaneous product materials (site posts, demos) document capabilities available on/after .
    • Category distinction. Preceding builders (e.g., Wix/Webflow/Bubble) are no-code/visual; 2023 copilots (e.g., ChatGPT/Copilot) generated snippets inside editors but did not provide an integrated “generate-and-publish” web-builder pipeline.
    • Comparables arrived later. AI-native platforms that adopted similar agentic flows shipped in 2024–2025, after Div-idy’s November 2023 milestone.

    Refs: Div-idy site; contrasts: Copilot Workspace, Webflow.

  5. Mar–May 2024 Model Inflection Points Enable Agentic Workflows

    Mar 4, 2024. Anthropic announces the Claude 3 family (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus), claiming strong benchmark gains relevant to reasoning and code.

    Feb 2024. Google introduces Gemini 1.5 Pro with breakthrough long-context (up to 1M tokens in preview), reshaping how builders feed whole repos/specs to a model.

    Feb 2024. Stability AI announces Stable Diffusion 3 (early preview), advancing text-to-image pipelines frequently embedded into builder workflows.

    May 13, 2024. OpenAI unveils GPT-4o (omni), lowering cost/latency and improving real-time, multimodal interactions (voice/UI) that vibe coders rely on.

    Refs: Claude 3, Gemini 1.5, SD3, GPT-4o.

  6. Apr–Sep 2024 AI-Native Tooling: From Autocomplete to Agents

    Apr 29, 2024. GitHub announces Copilot Workspace (technical preview), positioning a plan-and-build flow in natural language.

    Mid–late 2024. Replit rolls out Agent early access; subsequent versions evolve toward multi-step, semi-autonomous app building.

    Refs: Copilot Workspace, Replit Agent.

  7. Early 2025 “Vibe Coding” Coined & Popularized

    Feb 2, 2025. Andrej Karpathy uses the phrase “vibe coding” in a widely-shared X post describing fully conversational, AI-driven building.

    Mar 2025. Merriam-Webster adds a slang entry; mainstream coverage follows. The term rapidly becomes shorthand for conversational, AI-assisted software creation.

    Refs: Ars coverage, Merriam-Webster, Wikipedia.

  8. Mid–Late 2025 Capital Flows into Vibe-Coding Platforms

    Rapid adoption and revenue signals lead to large rounds: Cursor/Anysphere, Lovable, Replit, and iOS-native Vibecode announce financings that anchor the category.

    See detailed table below.

Funding & Ecosystem (Selected 2025)

Sortable table of representative financings associated with vibe-coding tools and platforms.

Date Company / Tool Amount Valuation Notes Source

Curatorial Notes on Claims

Bibliography / Primary Sources

  1. TinyMCE: “History of CMS & WYSIWYG: a timeline”.
  2. Wikipedia: Squarespace (origins 2003/04).
  3. Wikipedia: Weebly (founded 2006).
  4. Wikipedia: Wix (founded 2006).
  5. Wikipedia: Webflow (founded 2013).
  6. OpenAI: API availability context (2020).
  7. OpenAI: “Introducing ChatGPT and Whisper APIs” (Mar 1, 2023).
  8. Google PaLM API docs / coverage (2023).
  9. Anthropic: Claude on Vertex AI (docs).
  10. Anthropic: Claude 3 model family (Mar 4, 2024).
  11. Google: Gemini 1.5 announcement (Feb 2024).
  12. Stability AI: Stable Diffusion 3 (Feb 2024).
  13. OpenAI: “Hello GPT-4o” (May 13, 2024).
  14. GitHub: Copilot Workspace announcement (Apr 29, 2024).
  15. Replit Agent announcements (2024→).
  16. Ars Technica: coverage of Karpathy’s Feb 2, 2025 post.
  17. Merriam-Webster: “Vibe coding” slang entry (Mar 2025).
  18. Wikipedia: “Vibe coding”.
  19. Div-idy site + posts.
  20. TechCrunch: Cursor/Anysphere $900M at $9.9B (Jun 5, 2025).
  21. TechCrunch + Lovable blog: $200M Series A at $1.8B (Jul 2025).
  22. Reuters/SiliconANGLE: Replit $250M at $3B (Sep 10, 2025).
  23. Business Insider: Vibecode $9.4M seed (Aug 2025).
↑ Top