Vibe coding comes with its own vocabulary: prompts, tokens, lock-in, schema, Core Web Vitals. Here is every term you will run into when you build or buy a website with AI in 2026, defined in plain English by a crew that ships these sites every week. Skim it, or use your browser find (Ctrl or Cmd + F) to jump to the word that tripped you up.
- Vibe coding
- Building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI write the code, then steering it with follow-up prompts instead of typing most of the code yourself. The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025.
- Prompt
- The instruction you give an AI. For building a website, a good prompt is a full specification — ours run about 12,000 characters — not a one-line request.
- Prompt engineering
- Writing and refining prompts so the AI returns what you actually want. It is the difference between a generic template and a site that looks designed.
- LLM (large language model)
- The AI behind these tools — Claude, GPT, Gemini, and others. It generates text and code by predicting what should come next from your prompt.
- Static site
- A website made of plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files with no database or server code. It is the fastest and cheapest kind to host, often free, and ideal for a brochure or one-page business site.
- WordPress
- The most widely used content management system. A database-backed platform you extend with themes and plugins; the right choice when you need a blog, logins, memberships, or a store.
- CMS (content management system)
- Software that lets non-developers add and edit content without touching code. WordPress is the best-known example.
- WooCommerce
- The free plugin that turns a WordPress site into a full online store with products, a cart, and checkout.
- Headless
- Using a CMS purely to store content while a separate front end displays it. More flexible and faster, but more moving parts to build and maintain.
- Vibe coding platform
- A prompt-to-app tool such as Lovable, Bolt, v0, or Replit that generates a real codebase from natural language, usually React, which you can export.
- AI website builder
- A host or tool that generates a finished site — often a locked template with AI-written copy — from a few questions. Wix AI, GoDaddy Airo, and Squarespace Blueprint AI are examples.
- AI agent (agentic)
- An AI that plans and carries out several steps on its own — build, test, fix, deploy — rather than answering one prompt at a time. "Agentic" builders aim at this; most so-called AI builders are still single-step generators.
- Credits and tokens
- How AI builders meter usage. Each prompt or edit spends credits or tokens, and debugging loops burn them fast, so a heavy month costs far more than the sticker price.
- Lock-in
- When you cannot take your site off a platform because there is no working export. Leaving means rebuilding from scratch. It is the single biggest hidden cost of most AI builders.
- Code export
- The ability to download your site's real source code and host it anywhere. It is the antidote to lock-in and the reason we favor tools that give you the files.
- Hosting
- The service that stores your site's files on a server so visitors can load them. Static sites can be hosted free; WordPress needs a small monthly plan.
- Domain
- Your web address, like yoursite.com. You rent it yearly from a registrar; a .com runs roughly $10 to $15 a year.
- SSL / HTTPS
- The certificate and protocol that encrypt traffic and show the padlock in the browser. It is required for user trust and for search rankings, and it is free on every host worth using.
- Deploy
- Publishing your site's files to a host so they go live on the internet.
- Git and GitHub
- Version control — a record of every change — and the service where it lives. Exportable AI tools sync your code to GitHub so you truly own it.
- Schema / JSON-LD
- Structured data you add to a page so search engines and AI understand what it is — a restaurant, an FAQ, a product. It powers rich results in Google and citations in AI answers.
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- The work of making a site rank in Google through useful content, clean technical health, and credible links.
- AIO / GEO (AI optimization / generative engine optimization)
- Optimizing to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews: answer the question in the first lines, use concrete facts, add schema, and keep your facts consistent everywhere.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's measures of loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability (LCP, INP, and CLS). They affect both rankings and how the site feels to use.
- Responsive design
- A layout that adapts cleanly to phone, tablet, and desktop screens instead of breaking on small ones.
- Accessibility (a11y) / WCAG
- Building so people with disabilities can use the site — keyboard access, contrast, labels. WCAG 2.2 AA is the standard to aim for, and much of it also helps SEO.
- Alt text
- A short written description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and used by search engines to understand the picture.
- Meta title and meta description
- The clickable headline and the summary line that show up for your page in search results. Getting them right lifts your click-through rate.
- Landing page
- A single, focused page built to turn visitors into leads or customers, usually tied to one offer or ad.
- Lead form
- A form that captures inquiries. It needs a real submission endpoint and honest success and failure messages — a common thing AI tools fake.
- Hallucination
- When an AI confidently invents something false — a plugin that does not exist, a wrong API, a made-up statistic. It is why a human has to review everything an AI builds.
- Boilerplate
- Repeated, generic code or copy. A wall of it is a tell that the AI was handed two sentences instead of a real specification.
- Refactor
- Rewriting code to be cleaner or faster without changing what it does — routine cleanup that keeps an AI-built project maintainable.
- One-shot
- Getting a result from a single prompt with no back-and-forth. It demos well and is rarely enough for a real, shippable website.