The creator of OpenClaw, Peter Steinberger, has spoken out against the term "vibe coding," calling it a dismissive and inaccurate label that undermines the skill involved in AI-assisted software development. Steinberger, who built OpenClaw using OpenAI’s Codex, compared the process to learning to play the guitar—requiring practice, understanding, and expertise, not just instinct or mood. Originally named Clawdbot in reference to Claude Code, OpenClaw is a product of AI-powered coding tools and exemplifies the new wave of software development where developers use large language models to generate and refine code. Despite the term’s popularity, Steinberger rejects "vibe coding" as a slur, arguing it wrongly implies the work is effortless or unskilled. Speaking on OpenAI’s "Builders Unscripted" podcast, Steinberger acknowledged the shift in how software is built. “There are these people that write software the old way, and the old way is going to go away,” he said. “They call it ‘vibe coding.’ I think vibe coding is a slur.” He emphasized that effective AI coding demands deep understanding, critical thinking, and experience—qualities that aren’t reflected in the casual connotation of the term. Other industry leaders have echoed his concerns. Former Google Brain scientist Andrew Ng described the term as “unfortunate” and “misleading,” while Andrej Karpathy, who originally coined “vibe coding,” now believes the future lies in “agentic engineering”—a more precise term for AI systems that act autonomously and intelligently. Despite his reservations, the term gained widespread traction in 2025, even earning recognition as Collins Dictionary’s Word of the Year. Yet Steinberger remains focused on the substance behind the process. When asked by OpenAI’s Romain Huet whether he ships code without reading it, Steinberger replied, “Most code is boring. I have a pretty good understanding of what it writes.” His background as a former team manager helped shape his approach. “I led a team before,” he said. “I had a lot of software engineers under me. That also required accepting that they will not write exactly the same code that I want.” That mindset, he said, translates well to working with AI—knowing when to trust, when to guide, and when to refine. Before OpenClaw, Steinberger founded PSPDFKit, a widely used PDF library. His work has drawn attention from major AI labs. Anthropic asked him to rename his chatbot, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg reached out to share his own experiences testing it. Zuckerberg even extended a job offer, but Steinberger ultimately accepted an offer from OpenAI earlier this month. Sam Altman praised him as a “genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents.”