The end of AGI and the explosion of Vibe Coding.
2025 was the year clarity arrived in AI. On one side, AGI is dead. On the other AI is stronger than ever.
1. The End of Scaling: AGI Plateaus
The initial promise of AGI rested on a simple scaling principle: the more compute injected into a model, the smarter it becomes, until it can solve all problems. However, 2025 showed that the marginal benefits of scaling quickly plateau.
The day-to-day experience between the high-end models at the beginning and end of the year did not significantly change, and competition caught up rapidly. This confirmed that a single, isolated model is insufficient. And in fact intelligence doesn’t matter much. Agency is more important.
2. Vibe Coding demonstrated the power of feedback loops.
Vibe coding, the act of translating raw intent directly into code, exploded because the infrastructure surrounding the models massively progressed. The agentic loop is now capable of reading files, summarizing context, running tests and linters, navigating a UI, and even taking screenshots to verify its work. The key advancement is the reliable creation of self-correcting feedback loops.
The most sceptical coders has now realised it’s power.
3. Intelligence as Capacity to Act: The Cognitive Cone
This progress is rooted in a conceptual paradigm shift: intelligence should no longer measured by a vague AGI level, but by its ability to achieve goals despite environmental perturbations. In other words, we measure the extent of the agent’s Cognitive Cone (a concept I discuss further here). By empowering the agent to observe (read the state of the world) and act (manipulate tools, edit code), we dramatically increase its cognitive cone, yielding spectacular results far exceeding the capabilities of the isolated LLM.
4. Consequences: Platforms, Individuals, and Code
This could take platform enshittification to the next level, allowing them to iterate and optimize engagement metrics at unprecedented speed. This raises serious ethical concerns about the concentration of power.
Fortunately, vibe coding represents a powerful counter-force. It enables individuals to reclaim computing power and create personalized tools without relying on generic platforms (as explored in The Vibe Coding revolution.).
This new possibility of leveraging Vibe-coding to build a Personal AI Agent (a concept I will explore in 2026, as detailed in my Personal AI Manifesto) is the latent revolution of 2025.