Vibe Blogging

How AI Helped Me Write in My Own Voice

Just as vibe coding lets programmers "fully give in to the vibes" and let an AI handle the heavy lifting, vibe blogging applies a similar approach to writing. Instead of staring at a blank page or laboring over every sentence, I’ve been experimenting with co-writing my blog posts alongside an AI that understands my personal style. The idea is to capture my vibe – my tone, quirks, and perspective – while letting the AI help with phrasing and flow. The result is a creative process that feels fluid and fun, and, as one article put it, “greatly lowers the activation energy” needed to get started on a writing project.

What Is Vibe Blogging?

Vibe blogging is an approach to writing where you partner with a generative AI to produce content in a way that feels effortless and intuitive. The term “vibe” here is borrowed from the tech world’s recent vibe coding trend. AI researcher Andrej Karpathy popularized vibe coding to describe a relaxed, prompt-driven style of coding where you describe what you want in plain English and trust the AI to generate the code, hardly worrying about the nitty-gritty details. In his words, you “embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists,” focusing on ideas over implementation. Translating that to writing: vibe blogging means focusing on your ideas and story, and letting the AI do the heavy lifting of turning those ideas into well-formed paragraphs.

In practice, vibe blogging is all about flow. It’s writing in a “go with the flow” manner, guided by an AI that has been tuned into your writing style. Rather than meticulously crafting each sentence from scratch, I let the AI generate drafts or suggestions based on the vibe I want – then I tweak and refine as needed. This process has made writing feel more like a collaborative brainstorming session than a solitary slog. The AI offers up sentences and I respond, either by accepting, editing, or guiding it further. Because the AI is familiar with how I write (more on that soon), its suggestions generally sound like something I could have written. That means I can maintain an authentic voice, even though I have a high-tech helper working behind the scenes.

Crucially, vibe blogging doesn’t mean the AI writes the post for me while I passively watch. It’s a back-and-forth dance. I am still the one setting the direction, deciding on the message, and injecting the personal anecdotes or insights that make the blog mine. The AI’s role is more like a supportive co-writer or an editor who finishes my sentences when I stumble. This partnership has a huge benefit: it lowers the barrier to starting and completing a blog post. The intimidation of a blank document is gone – I always have something to work with, because the AI can generate a quick draft of a section once I give it some pointers. As O’Reilly’s Radar recently noted, one of the joys of “vibe-ing” is that it “greatly lowers the activation energy of getting started on creative personal-scale projects”. I’ve found that to be absolutely true for writing. With vibe blogging, there’s always momentum; there’s always a vibe to ride.

Training the AI on My Writing Style

The first step in my vibe blogging experiment was teaching the AI to understand my voice. I’ve written a number of blog posts over the years, each with my own style – a certain rhythm, preferred vocabulary, and tone that regular readers might recognize. To make sure the AI’s contributions would blend seamlessly with my writing, I trained the model on my older blogs. In practice, this meant supplying the AI with examples of my past writing so it could learn how I express myself. Think of it as giving the AI a crash course in “How I Write 101.”

Feeding the AI my writing samples had a clear goal: I wanted any text it generates to sound like something I could have written. This involved showing it the kinds of phrases I use, the balance of formal and informal language in my posts, how I structure my paragraphs, even the humor or metaphors I tend to include. After this training phase (which can be done with specialized AI models or by priming a large language model with plenty of excerpts), the AI started to pick up on my quirks. For example, it learned that I often ask rhetorical questions in my introductions, and that I like to conclude sections with a reflective one-liner. It noticed that I seldom use slang, that I prefer an optimistic tone, and that I love analogies related to music (a little odd detail about my style!).

The effect of this style training was immediately apparent the first time I tried having the AI write a paragraph for me. The sentences it produced felt eerily familiar – as if I had written them myself on a particularly good day. There were still occasional giveaways that a machine was involved (a phrase that sounded too clichéd for me, or an overly verbose line), but these were easy to spot and adjust. Overall, the training worked: the AI got in tune with my vibe. This step gave me confidence to proceed, because I knew the raw material the AI provided wouldn’t be completely off-base or require total rewrites. Instead, it would be a solid first draft in my voice – something I could then polish. In a sense, I had cloned my writing persona into the AI, so that it could ghostwrite in a way that still felt authentically “me.”

Outlining the Blog: Setting Theme and Flow

Even with a stylistically-savvy AI on my side, I quickly learned that I needed to do the foundational work of planning the post. Vibe blogging doesn’t replace the creative thinking and decision-making that go into a good blog; rather, it amplifies them. So before I ever ask the AI to generate a single sentence, I formulate the overall flow of the blog post on my own. This means deciding on the central theme or message I want to convey, and sketching out a high-level outline of sections or key points. In other words, I answer the big questions first: What am I really trying to say? and How should I structure those thoughts in writing?

For this very post on vibe blogging, I planned it out the old-fashioned way with pen and paper (and yes, the irony of using pen and paper for an AI-assisted writing post isn’t lost on me!). I noted down the unique angle I wanted to highlight – which is the idea that using AI as a copy editor can help express one’s ideas better without losing the personal touch. That was the main idea I set out to explore. Then I outlined the flow: I would need to start by explaining what vibe blogging is, then talk about how I trained the AI, then describe the step-by-step process I follow for each section, and finally reflect on the experience. Essentially, I created a roadmap for the post.

Defining the flow and purpose of each section upfront was incredibly useful once I started collaborating with the AI. For each segment of the outline, I jotted a quick note about the vibe or intent of that section. For example: Introduction – set the stage, define vibe blogging in relatable terms. Or Training the AI – explain how I taught it my style, why that matters. By doing this, I had a clear intention for every part of the post. This meant when it was time to generate text with the AI, I could guide it with specific instructions for each section, keeping the writing on track. It’s much easier to steer an AI when you have a firm idea of where you want to go. Conversely, if I had skipped this outlining step and just said, “Hey AI, write me a blog post about vibe blogging,” I’d probably end up with a meandering or generic piece. The unique ideas come from the writer; the AI helps to articulate those ideas. So, my outline served as the blueprint that ensured the final post would have my logical structure and emphasis, not the AI’s guess at what might be important.

Vibe Blogging in Action: Section by Section

With an outline in hand and a model attuned to my style, I moved on to the actual writing – or what I call vibe-writing each section. Rather than writing the entire post in one go (or asking the AI to do so), I tackled it piecewise. I treated each section of my outline as a mini vibe blogging session of its own. This approach kept the process manageable and allowed me to maintain coherence throughout the article.

Here’s how my vibe blogging process typically works, step by step:

1. Brainstorm & Prompt: For a given section, I start by writing a brief note or a few bullet points about what I want to say in that section. This could be as simple as a sentence describing the main point, or a list of keywords and ideas. I then feed that to the AI as a prompt, essentially saying, “Here’s what I want to talk about – can you help me say it better?”

2. AI Draft Generation: The AI responds by generating a draft paragraph (or a few) for that section. Thanks to the earlier style training, this draft is phrased in a way that resembles my writing style. It’s as if it read my mind and translated my bullet points into full sentences.

3. Review & Tweak: I read the AI’s draft carefully. This is a critical step: I check if it captured the meaning correctly and if the tone matches what I intended. Most of the time it’s a strong starting point, but I may find places where the wording is slightly off or the emphasis isn’t exactly what I want. I might also spot any factual inaccuracies or statements I didn’t intend (though since I provided the ideas, outright fabrications are rare in this context).

4. Guided Revisions: If the draft isn’t quite there, I’ll talk to the AI to refine it. Sometimes I highlight a sentence and ask the AI to rephrase it in a clearer way. Other times I might tell the AI, “expand on this idea,” or “make this sound more casual,” or “can you add an example here about my experience?” This iterative back-and-forth is akin to having an editor who responds instantly. The AI will produce an updated version incorporating my feedback. We might go through a couple of iterations until the section feels right.

5. Section Integration: Once I’m happy with the drafted section, I place it into the blog draft. Then I move on to the next section of the outline and repeat the process. I remain mindful of the transitions between sections – I’ll usually write a linking sentence myself or ensure the AI knows what came before, so the narrative flows logically from one part to the next.

6. Whole-Post Polishing: After all sections are drafted, I do a final read-through of the entire post (often with fresh eyes after a break). In this pass, I look for overall coherence, consistent voice, and any awkward bits that slipped through. I might do a little extra vibe check here – occasionally asking the AI to smooth a particularly rough sentence or double-checking that the introduction and conclusion tie together nicely.

Following this step-by-step vibe blogging workflow, I gradually build up the post. Writing in sections like this has two big advantages for me: first, it prevents overwhelm (I’m never faced with writing a 1500-word article from scratch; I’m just focusing on 200-300 words at a time). Second, it ensures quality control at a micro level – I can pay attention to detail within each chunk and ensure it meets my standards before moving on. By the end, all these AI-assisted sections come together like pieces of a puzzle that fit neatly into the bigger picture I had outlined.

Using AI as a Copy Editor (Not a Replacer)

One of the most powerful aspects of vibe blogging in my process is using the AI as a kind of copy editor for my own words. I often begin a section or paragraph by writing out a rough draft in my own words, without worrying too much about elegance. This rough draft captures my raw thoughts – it might be clunky or too verbose, but it has the essence of what I want to say. Then I turn to the AI and essentially ask it: “How can we say this better?”

For example, I might write a sentence like: “Training the AI on my style was important because it needed to sound like me.” That’s a decent sentence, but a bit plain. I’d feed this to the AI and it might suggest something like: “I knew I had to teach the AI to talk like me if I wanted its words to blend seamlessly with mine.” A small change, but notice how the AI’s version has a bit more flair and flow. In many cases, the AI’s rephrasing preserves my meaning exactly, while making the delivery smoother or more engaging. It’s doing the same job a human editor or a good writing assistant might do: taking my rough clay of an idea and molding it into a more polished form.

I’ve found this especially useful for eliminating repetitive phrasing and sharpening unclear points. If I accidentally use the same adjective three times in a paragraph, the AI will vary the language. If my sentence is wandering without getting to the point, the AI will often tighten it. Essentially, the AI acts as an extra set of eyes and ears, catching things I might miss and proposing enhancements. All of this happens, importantly, under my supervision. I don’t blindly accept every suggestion; I cherry-pick the ones that actually improve the text and reject or tweak the ones that don’t. The control ultimately stays with me.

Using the AI as a copy editor also means I can maintain consistency of voice more easily across the whole post. Since the AI has been tuned to my style, when it edits or completes a sentence, it usually stays true to the voice I’ve established. If I had a human editor, their personal style might accidentally bleed into the text; with the AI trained on me, the edits tend to sound like me as well. Of course, I remain vigilant. There are times it suggests a phrase that I never would say – those stick out like a sore thumb (for instance, at one point it suggested the word “imbue” which just isn’t in my everyday vocab). I simply reword those parts myself. The goal is not to let the AI override my personality, but to let it enhance my clarity. In the end, what goes into the final draft is a mix of my original wording and the AI’s polished alternatives, all woven together so that it reads as one cohesive voice.

Reflections on the Vibe Blogging Experience

This experiment in vibe blogging has been both eye-opening and rewarding. For one thing, it fundamentally changed how I feel about the writing process. Writing used to sometimes feel like pulling teeth on days when the words just wouldn’t come. But when I’m vibe blogging, I never really feel stuck in the same way. There’s a sense that I’m never writing alone – I have a collaborator who’s always ready to generate the next sentence or suggest a different way to phrase something. This has made writing more playful and less intimidating. I dare say it even makes writing fun on a whole new level. The blank page is no longer an enemy, because I can always prompt the AI to give me a starting point, and then the ideas start flowing.

I also appreciate how efficient the process can be. What might have taken me a whole afternoon to draft can sometimes be done in a couple of hours with the AI’s help, without sacrificing quality. In fact, in many cases the quality of the first draft improves because the AI helps avoid some of my usual pitfalls (like the occasional run-on sentence or wandering explanation). Of course, I invest time in reviewing and editing the AI’s output, but it’s time spent fine-tuning rather than wrestling to come up with content. The heavy lift of turning thoughts into full paragraphs is shared. This freed-up mental energy lets me concentrate more on the ideas I want to convey and less on the mechanics of wording. It’s akin to having an assistant who handles the busywork, allowing me as the writer to stay focused on the creative core.

Perhaps the most important outcome is that the final blog posts still feel authentic to me. This was a pleasant surprise and something I was cautiously optimistic about. Because I guided every section and infused my own perspective throughout, the end product doesn’t read like some generic AI article – it reads like my article, just one where I happened to have a very diligent editor on call. In fact, a few readers of my recent AI-assisted posts commented that they couldn’t tell any difference in voice; if anything, they just noted the posts were “well-written” and clear. That to me is a sign of success. The goal was never to let the AI take over – it was to let the AI amplify my voice, not replace it. And from my experience, when done carefully, vibe blogging achieves exactly that.

It’s worth noting that vibe blogging, like vibe coding, works best when you use it for the right kind of projects. I’ve been writing reflective, general-audience blog posts (like this one) where the stakes are fairly low – it’s about sharing personal experiences or insights. In this domain, letting the AI suggest wording is harmless and helpful. If I were writing something requiring absolute precision or deep factual accuracy (say a scientific report or a news article), I would be much more cautious. Generative AIs can occasionally produce errors or spout a “fact” that isn’t true. In my vibe blogging process, this hasn’t been a big issue because I’m feeding the AI the facts (from my own life or knowledge) and it’s mostly rephrasing them. But I still keep an eye out and fact-check anything that looks unfamiliar, just in case. Using the AI as a collaborator means you also take on the role of a fact-checker and final gatekeeper.

Another thing I’ve learned is that building trust in the AI’s suggestions takes a bit of time. In my earliest attempts, I found myself micromanaging the AI’s output, almost not trusting it – I would double-check every small detail and often rewrite things that were actually fine. As I gained experience (and as the AI proved itself by mimicking my style well and not going off track), I relaxed my grip a little. I started to trust that its first draft for a section would be, say, 80% there, and I only needed to fix the remaining 20%. This trust is what the concept of “vibe checking” is about in the coding world – letting the AI do its thing, then verifying and tweaking as needed to build confidence in it. I’ve effectively done a similar thing for writing: I let the AI have a go at a paragraph, I check it over, and with each successful section my confidence grows that, yes, we’ve got a good vibe going. It’s a positive feedback loop where the AI and I get more in sync over time.

Embracing the Vibe

All in all, my foray into vibe blogging has shown me that AI can be a powerful ally in the creative process. By training the AI on my style and clearly defining my ideas and structure, I was able to harness its strengths (speed, eloquence, endless patience in rewriting) without losing the human touch that makes a blog post resonate. The experience feels less like outsourcing my writing and more like augmenting it. I’m still present in every line – in the ideas, in the humor, in the perspective – but I have a clever assistant who helps me choose the best words and polish the delivery.

For any writer who finds themselves juggling great ideas but struggling to articulate them, vibe blogging offers an intriguing path forward. It’s a blend of personal creativity and artificial assistance, a way to get into flow quickly and keep momentum until you’ve said what you wanted to say. I’ve found it to be a reflective process as well: working with an AI makes you think about your own style and habits more consciously (after all, you have to teach your style to the AI, which means you first must understand it yourself!). It’s given me new insight into how I write and how I could write better.

Going forward, I plan to continue using AI in this collaborative manner. Far from making me feel obsolete as a writer, it’s empowered me to write more confidently and prolifically. The vibe is well and truly alive in my blogging now. And if you’ve read this far, you’ve actually just experienced the outcome of vibe blogging firsthand – this very post was written using the techniques I described. ✨ In the end, the message I want to share is that writing with AI doesn’t have to be soulless or cheating; it can be a creative partnership that amplifies your unique voice. As I hit “publish” on this experiment, I’m excited about where this journey will go next, and I’m happy to embrace the vibe every time I sit down to write.