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Let me tell you about the moment I knew everything had changed.

 A five-year-old sat in on a workshop I hosted last year. She had an idea, an app that would turn her thoughts into colouring books. No business plan. No technical specifications. Just pure imagination and the confidence that only a child possesses.

Within minutes, not months, not weeks, she was watching her creation come to life on screen. No coding bootcamp. No computer science degree. Just her imagination and a conversation with AI.

I’ve been building AI companies for over a decade. I’ve seen hype cycles come and go. But seeing that little child casually do what would have cost a company thousands of dollars and weeks months of development time. That was the moment I understood we had crossed a threshold that cannot be uncrossed.

Welcome to the age of Vibe Coding. And if you are running a business in the Caribbean, you need to pay very close attention to what comes next.

So What Exactly Is This Vibe Coding Thing?

Vibe Coding is exactly what it sounds like, and I love that the tech industry finally gave something an honest name.

It’s the practice of building software applications by simply describing what you want in plain English or Patois. Or the way you would explain it to a friend at a rumbar.

Instead of writing complex lines of code, you have a conversation with an AI system. You explain your vision, you refine your requirements through dialogue. And you watch as functional software materialises before your eyes like some kind of digital obeah, but it’s just AI.

The term captures the essence perfectly: you’re coding by “vibes, “by intention and description, rather than by syntax and semicolons and those curly brackets that have haunted computer science students since the 1970s.

Think of it this way, traditional coding is like learning to play every instrument in an orchestra. Vibe Coding is like being the conductor. You direct the music without needing to master each instrument yourself. You focus on what the music should feel like, and the AI handles the technical execution.

According to recent industry research, Vibe Coding reduces development time by up to 90% for simple to moderately complex applications. Seventy per cent of routine coding tasks can now be handled through AI-assisted development.

Companies adopting AI-powered development report 40 to 60% reduction in time to market for new digital products. And GitHub data shows developers using AI coding assistants are 55% more productive than those who don’t.

Read those numbers again, this isn’t an incremental improvement; we are seeing a fundamental restructuring of what’s possible.

The Board Member Who Made IT Obsolete (For An Hour, At Least)

A board member of a major Caribbean corporation came to one of our workshops. Now, this man had been frustrated for years with a single problem. He knew exactly what the solution should be but couldn’t communicate in a way IT could get. Every conversation with IT turned into a months-long project with budgets climbing into the hundreds of thousands, scope creep spreading like crab grass, and timelines that seemed to exist in some alternate dimension where calendars moved backwards.

He sat down at our workshop with the same scepticism I’ve seen on a thousand faces. Arms crossed. Eyebrows raised. The universal body language of “impress me, youngblood, I dare you.”

One hour later, he had built a working prototype of his application. Not a mockup, not a PowerPoint slide. A functioning application that did what he’d been trying to explain for two years.

The look on his face is something I will remember for the rest of my career. He looked at his screen, then at me, then back at his screen, like he was trying to figure out if someone was playing a very elaborate prank.

“You have a team in the other room a build it while a talk???” he said.

His mindset and the conversation shifted from “should we build this?” to “how do we scale this?” That’s the power shift we’re witnessing. And it’s happening whether established IT departments are ready for it or not.

How Does This Actually Work? (The Practical Part)

For those of you who appreciate step by step guidance, here’s how Vibe Coding actually functions in practice.

Step One: Describe Your Vision. 

Open an AI coding tool like Claude, ChatGPT, or specialised platforms like Cursor, Replit, or Bolt, there are many. Then describe what you want to build like you’re telling a very competent friend what you need.

“I need an inventory management systemfor my hardware store that tracks stock levels and alerts me when items run low.”

Step Two: Iterate Through Conversation. 

The AI generates code. You test it. Something doesn’t work quite right? You tell the AI about it. “The alert is triggering too frequently. Make it only notify me when stock drops below 20% of typical monthly sales.

“The AI adjusts. You test again. You refine. You converse.

Step Three: Refine and Deploy. 

Through this back-and-forth dialogue, you shape the application until it matches your exact needs. What once required a development team and months of work now happens in hours or days.

Step Four: Maintain and Evolve. 

Need new features? Have the same conversation. Your software grows with your business through continuous dialogue rather than expensive development cycles and change request forms that seem designed to discourage anyone from actually requesting changes.

Now Let’s Talk About The Risks (Because anything worthdoing has it)

I’ve been in this industry too long to present any technology as a silver bullet without shadows. If someone tells you any technology has no downsides, they’re either uninformed or trying to sell you something. These are the legitimate risks that Caribbean businesses must navigate carefully.

Security Vulnerabilities

AI generated code can contain security flaws. The AI doesn’t inherently know your security requirements, your compliance obligations, or the specific threats your industry faces. Without technical review, you might deploy software with vulnerabilities that expose customer data or business operations to attack. Always have critical applications reviewed by security professionals before deployment. The money you save on development should partly fund proper security audits.

The Black Box Problem

When you vibe code an application, you may not fully understand how it works internally. This becomes problematic when something breaks at 2am on a Sunday before your biggest sales day of the year. Building on foundations you don’t understand creates fragility. It’s like driving a car when you have no idea what any of the warning lights mean.

Quality and Reliability

AI can produce code that works beautifully in testing but fails spectacularly under real world conditions. For mission-critical systems like financial transactions, medical applications, orsafety systems, vibe coded solutions require rigorous testing and often professional oversight.

Do not vibe code your banking security. Please.

Intellectual Property Questions

The legal landscape around AI-generated code remains unsettled, and I say this as someone who watches these developments very closely. Who owns code that AI produced? How do you protect trade secrets when AI systems have been trained on millions of public repositories?

Caribbean businesses must stay informed as these regulations evolve.

Over Reliance and Skill Atrophy

If we train a generation to vibe code without understanding fundamentals, we risk creatingdependency on systems we can’t control or modify when AI tools change or become unavailable. Balance is essential. Vibe coding should augment human capability, not replace human understanding entirely.

The Caribbean Opportunity (This Is Where I Get Passionate)

I founded the Caribbean’s first AI company because I saw a fundamental truth that kept me upat night: our region has been held back not by lack of ideas, not by lack of talent, not by lack ofentrepreneurial spirit. 

We’ve been held back by lack of access to technical implementation. Every business owner in the Caribbean has had the experience of having a brilliant idea and then discovering it would cost more to build than their entire annual revenue. Every manager has watched their organisation fall behind international competitors simply because they couldn’t afford the development resources to modernise their operations.

Vibe Coding changes everything.

A small business in Montego Bay can now prototype and deploy applications that would have required a Kingston development firm and significant capital. A manufacturer in Port of Spain can build custom inventory and logistics tools without waiting for enterprise software vendors who treat the Caribbean like an afterthought. 

A tourism operator in Nassau can create booking systems tailored to their exact needs rather than forcing their business to conform to software designed for completely different markets.

The democratisation of software development means the playing field isn’t just levelling up. It’s inverting. Organisations with the most ideas and fastest execution will win, regardless of their historical IT budgets. The advantage is shifting from those with the most resources to those with the most imagination and willingness to act.

For the first time in the history of our region’s engagement with technology, we are not playing catch up. We are at the starting line at the same moment as everyone else. What we do with this opportunity will define Caribbean business for the next generation.

Getting Started: A Framework For The Action Oriented

For Caribbean business leaders ready to stop reading and start doing, here’s my recommended approach.

Start Small, Think Big.

Begin with low stakes internal tools. An automated report generator. A simple customer feedback collector. A staff scheduling assistant. Build confidence and understanding before tackling customer-facing applications. Nobody learns to swim in the deep end during a hurricane.

Invest in AI Literacy. 

Your team doesn’t need to become programmers, but they do need to understand how to effectively communicate with AI systems. Clear, specific prompting is a skill that improves with practice. The people who learn to give good instructions to AI will become the most valuable employees in any organisation.

Establish Governance. 

Create clear policies about what can be vibe coded and what requires professional development. Customer financial data? Professional security review required.

Internal meeting scheduler? Vibe code away. The goal is speed with appropriate guardrails, not recklessness.

Build Hybrid Teams.

The most effective model combines vibe coding enthusiasts with traditional technical expertise. Let your business experts prototype rapidly, then bring in technical professionals for refinement and security review. You want both the dreamers and the engineers at the same table.

Document and Test. 

Just because development is faster doesn’t mean you skip testing. Build robust testing protocols and document what you create for future maintenance. Your future self will thank your present self.

The Moment Is Now

That five year old at my workshop didn’t just create a colouring book app. She demonstrated a fundamental truth about the future of technology: the barrier between imagination and implementation is collapsing.

For fifteen years, I’ve been building AI companies in this region. I’ve seen technologies come and go. I’ve watched hype cycles inflate and deflate. I’ve learned to be skeptical of anyone who says “this changes everything” because usually it doesn’t.

But Vibe Coding? This changes everything.

Not because the technology is magic. It isn’t. Not because it solves all problems. It doesn’t. But because it puts the power of software creation into the hands of the people who understand business problems best: the people experiencing them every day.

The question isn’t whether Vibe Coding will transform Caribbean business. It will. That transformation is already underway. The question is whether you’ll be leading that transformation or scrambling to catch up while your competitors build the future you should have built first.

The conversation starts now. And for the first time in history, everyone gets to be part of it.

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Adrian Dunkley is an AI Expert with over 15 years of experience in the field. He is the founder of StarApple AI, the Caribbean’s first AI company and a serial entrepreneur who has built multiple AI companies across the region. He conducts workshops and training programmes helping Caribbean businesses and individuals harness the power of artificial intelligence.

For enquiries and business consultations, contact [email protected]