The spectrum of agentic coding: From vibe coding to high-quality software engineering

After spending over a billion tokens on AI-assisted coding over the past two and a half years - from creating one of the first agentic coding tools (Kaguya) to daily production use - I’ve realized that vibe coding and traditional software engineering are not opposites. They exist on a spectrum.

This talk introduces a four-level framework for agentic coding:

1. Vibe coding - let AI go wild, forget the code exists
2. Agentic coding with discipline - version control, file-level understanding, basic testing
3. Agentic software engineering - CI, pre-commit hooks, function-level understanding
4. High-quality software engineering - line-by-line understanding, interactive code reviews, indistinguishable from handwritten code

You’ll learn when to use each level, how to level up your agentic coding practices, and why the real problem with “slop” isn’t AI - it’s not putting enough thought and effort into the process. The key insight: more tokens spent doesn’t have to mean more garbage. It can mean higher quality code, better research, and deeper understanding.