The coolest GPT-5 feature? It finally fulfills the vibe coding promise.

OpenAI’s best-ever large language model is here. GPT-5 is set to breathe new life into ChatGPT, making it faster, more helpful, and easier to use. Along with GPT-5, OpenAI launched a ton of new features for ChatGPT — more customization options, a better voice mode, a new user interface, and more. But all of those features pale in comparison to one specific improvement to ChatGPT — its vibe coding abilities.

Vibe coding is certainly the buzzword du jour. It's a type of software development that doesn't require any traditional coding skills. Rather, you simply describe the type of software, app, or tool you want to create and let AI do the rest.

In general, OpenAI promises that GPT-5 makes big improvements in coding. We'll let developers speak to how well GPT-5 handles hardcore coding assignments. But based on the GPT-5 livestream event and our own initial tests, GPT-5's coolest feature by far is its ability to make custom, interactive applications based on simple, natural-language prompts. It's a vibe coder's dream come true.

For education, for work, or just for fun, ChatGPT can now make fully realized apps and software in minutes — and it's all thanks to GPT-5.

GPT-5 is your own personal coder

Credit: Screenshot: OpenAI

Vibe coding has become much more popular as AI services have improved. Vibe coding is essentially a term given to “coding” using natural language. You ask AI assistants to handle the actual code. If you need any fixes, you ask for changes in plain old English (or whatever language you speak). 

Vibe coding is very much in its infancy, but GPT-5 has the potential to change this. According to the company, GPT-5 is your own personal coder. Can’t find the perfect app for your specific needs? Or have an idea for a new website that you need help creating? GPT-5 can do it.

At the GPT-5 launch event, OpenAI leaders demoed this feature in real time. An OpenAI team member described a French language learning app to GPT-5, including a “Snake” like game that pronounces words in French and uses a mouse and cheese (in place of a snake). The prompt also requested a way to track progress, practice quizzes, and more. GPT-5 wrote hundreds of lines of code in a matter of minutes, and the end result was exactly what the prompt described.

Credit: Screenshot: OpenAI

OpenAI says that GPT-5 is better at “agentic coding.” That basically means you’ll be able to ask it to create something, and it’ll go off and do so for “many minutes” at a time – all in the background, and without you watching it work.

We tried vibe coding with GPT-5 ourselves

To put GPT-5's vibe coding abilities to the test, Mashable's tech editor asked it to create a visualization of the sinking of the Titanic, using this prompt:

Please create a custom visualization that shows the sinking of the Titanic, with a clock showing the timeline of events. The visualization should show inside the ship, including the waterproof compartments and the leaks that ultimately caused the ship to sink. You should be able to pause the visualization and click on the ship to reveal information about the timeline of events.

First, we tried this prompt with GPT-4o. The results weren't great. Its first attempt didn't even work; ChatGPT had to de-bug its own program. When it was finished, the visualizations were also extremely minimal, and it was barely interactive. However, GPT-5 made quick work of this assignment. (See the output for yourself at ChatGPT.)

GPT-5 created a realistic visualization, just like we asked, showing how water filled each compartment of the Titanic. The application takes you through the full timeline of events, and you can pause, speed up the visualization, and jump ahead to specific times of interest.

Left: Credit: OpenAI

Right: Credit: OpenAI

Now, it's not perfect. With further prompt engineering, you could give ChatGPT clearer instructions on the types of visuals. And the graphic of the waterproof compartments blocks other elements in the app as the timeline progresses. However, this feels like a massive leap forward for vibe coding.

I don't expect GPT-5 to get everything right all of the time, especially when it comes to coding, and especially just after launch. When you’re vibe-coding, you’re trying to communicate what you want in natural language. And if you’ve ever been misunderstood by a friend or spouse, then you know that it’s not always easy to communicate ideas. You’ll likely have to tweak and refine any software that you code with GPT-5.

GPT-5 also likely won’t create code that’s completely bug-free, as our experience demonstrates. However, we can say that it's remarkably better than GPT-4o.

Natural language is the next coding language

Even if GPT-5 isn’t perfect, it’s clear that the way we create software is changing. I've often heard it said that the next big coding language is actually just natural language. Now, I'm starting to really believe it.

In the future, you won’t need to learn actual programming languages to be able to code — you’ll just need to be able to communicate your ideas.

We’ll also have to wait and see exactly how much better at programming GPT-5 really is, or if the improvements are more iterative. After all, Anthropic’s Claude is often considered to be better at coding than ChatGPT. And while the benchmarks reported in the GPT-5 system card put GPT-5 ahead of Claude, more independent testing will be needed to confirm this.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.