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Meta's product managers are vibe coding prototype apps and showing them to Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Nic Coury/AP
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Meta's product managers aren't waiting on engineers to turn ideas into demos. Instead, they are vibe coding to design prototype apps themselves and presenting them directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"PMs are actually vibe coding products, and we're showing them to Zuck and leadership, and it's allowing us to iterate and explore the space really fast," said Joseph Spisak, a product director in Meta's Superintelligence Labs (MSL), onstage at the TechEquity AI Summit in Sunnyvale, California, on Friday.

Vibe coding, a term originating in developer communities, refers to AI-assisted coding using instructions provided in natural language.

"We can literally vibe code products in a matter of hours, days, and explore the space," Spisak added.

Spisak described Meta's "internal systems" as powerful enough for non-engineers to adjust interfaces on the fly, allowing developers to "change colors and change ideas."

The remarks shed new light on how Meta, like the rest of Silicon Valley, is reorganizing product development around AI assistants. Meta uses at least two: Metamate, a ChatGPT-style bot trained on internal data, and Devmate, a coding assistant that incorporates multiple large language models, including those from rivals like Anthropic, to speed up programming.

Speeding up the development process and embracing vibe coding have become top priorities at MSL, which Meta formed in June as it races against other AI rivals. One memo from late September said that Meta's existing systems, designed for billions of users and giant engineering teams, take "too long" to deploy changes and are "not conducive to vibe coding," making it harder for small, fast-moving AI teams to experiment.

Similar transformations are underway across Silicon Valley. Google has spent the past year pushing workers to integrate AI into every stage of product development. Last year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that more than a quarter of Google's code is generated by AI before being reviewed by humans. At Microsoft, executives have told managers that "using AI is no longer optional," according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider.

Meta is making similar internal pushes toward AI. The company tracks employees' AI usage through dashboards, sets adoption targets, and even runs an internal game called Level Up that rewards staff who hit AI milestones, Business Insider reported last month.

Vibe coding skills have also become a recruiting priority across the tech industry. Firms like Reddit and DoorDash now list experience with AI coding tools like Cursor and Bolt as desired skills, according to a Business Insider report, and at least one Y Combinator startup calls vibe coding "non-negotiable" for new hires.

"We are getting to the point where the barriers are really low right now," Spisak told the audience, adding that even his 11-year-old daughter now vibe codes new environments to play in Roblox

"This is what I tell PMs at Meta and other places where I mentor PMs," Spisak said. "Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty."

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Pranav Dixit
Pranav Dixit
Pranav Dixit is the Meta Correspondent at Business Insider based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He writes about Meta’s products, policies, and internal workings while examining how the company’s decisions shape how billions of people connect and communicate.Previously, Pranav was the India-based technology correspondent for BuzzFeed News, covering the impact of Silicon Valley’s largest companies on the culture, society, and politics of more than a billion people in South Asia. He has also been a senior news editor at Engadget and ran technology coverage at the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest national newspapers.Pranav’s reporting has shed light on the human consequences of Big Tech’s quest for growth in emerging markets, and sparked widespread conversations about the impact of American technology companies on the Global South. In 2019, he won Syracuse University’s Mirror Award for a boots-on-the-ground feature about how WhatsApp misinformation sparked gruesome lynchings in rural India. He has also reported from Kashmir, a volatile geopolitical hotspot, documenting the world’s longest-running internet shutdown.His work has been widely cited by major national and international publications, and he has been featured on the BBC, Al Jazeera, and podcasts such as Vox Media’s Land of the Giants to discuss his work. He has also spoken in journalism classes including at UC Berkeley’s graduate journalism program. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vox, Time, The Information, and Al Jazeera.Pranav moved to the United States in 2021 from New Delhi, India, to be a fellow at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, where he studied the evolution of the American tech press and ways newsrooms around the world can cover technology and society more effectively.Got a tip about Meta or anything else in Silicon Valley? Contact Pranav via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1408-905-9124), or email him at pdixit@insider.com or pranavdixit@protonmail.com. You can also reach him on WhatsApp at +857-753-3949 or DM him on X (@PranavDixit) or BlueSky (@pranavdixit.bsky.social).Pranav keeps sources anonymous. Please use a non-work device to reach out.Expertise: Meta, Facebook, WhatsApp, Llama, AI, Threads, Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, social media, platforms, immigration