What Happens When Vibe Coding Leaves the Screen

Tech community builder Chris Pirillo is hosting a hands-on workshop on Jan. 17, 2026 to help non-developers get comfortable building with AI

Chris Pirillo via Ken Yeung/reillustration via Microsoft Copilot

When Chris Pirillo showed his 11-year-old daughter Google Gemini one day, it didn’t take her long to have it code a game to help her learn multiplication. “She wasn’t weighed down with the idea that she couldn’t do it. She just assumed she could—and she did. She identified her problem, and she solved it,” he recounts. This is the spirit the veteran community builder and creator wants to bring to his live event series CTRL+ALT+CREATE, where he aims to help people become more comfortable with vibe coding.

“For most vibe coding gatherings, it’s engineers, software developers, people who understand the difference between a command line interface and a GUI,” he tells The AI Economy in an interview. But what about the rest of us, those who are interested in technology, creative, and entrepreneurial? “When I talk to non-technical people, they know that these options are out there—they just don’t know how to embrace them.”

Fans of Pirillo will recognize his name from his time on TechTV in the early 2000s, his popular Gnomedex tech conference, or his frequent Twitch and YouTube livestreams. Lately, he’s been vibe coding in public, broadcasting himself using AI to build fun applications. He says that he’s already developed 160 programs, though he concedes that none will be the “next billion-dollar SaaS unicorn.” Nevertheless, “they are ideas that would have remained ideas without you basically speaking them to life.”

Even after being bitten by the vibe coding bug about a year ago, Pirillo reveals he never set out to create an event around it. That said, being a creator, he wanted to share what he was doing, but didn’t feel a video was good enough—anybody could do the same thing. So he went back to his roots to “create something out of nothing…and focus in on that intended audience, the entrepreneur, the would-be entrepreneur, a little beyond the hobbyist, someone who’s looking to make, create, and use that as a foundation, as well as for the people who are already actively creating and giving them a community to help grow so it accomodates the full range of noobs, all the way to experts.”

On Saturday, January 17, 2026, Pirillo is hosting his latest CTRL+ALT+CREATE vibe coding workshop in Seattle, Washington. He’s inviting anyone interested in the approach to attend. Don’t know where to start, but are keen to give vibe coding a try? This is for you. But don’t expect lectures or guest speakers because the agenda is all about building. Attendees have two hours to use AI coding tools to produce something.

The workshop’s design is meant to be collaborative and less instructional. Pirillo acknowledges that there’s a lot he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to be seen as the expert. Still, he emphasizes that he’s good at bringing people together, and that, hopefully, those with shared interests or similar problems can collaborate to build solutions.

Think about it as a hackathon for regular people. It’s designed to encourage creativity through a hands-on experience, build community, and inspire attendees to realize they can use tools like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Lovable, and Vercel to bring their ideas to life, regardless of their technical background.

“There’s a greater need for humanizing and approaching these technologies that we hear about, but we think it’s for somebody else. The people who know it’s not for somebody else are one group of people, and the people who are somewhat gatekeeping are another group of people. And the people that are just miles ahead are just talking to the people who are already miles ahead, is another group of people,” Pirillo asserts. “Most folks—small mom and pop business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs—they’re trying to figure out…where do I start. And just kicking them out of that mode, just to have them do something creative, you never know where that creativity is going to spark and lead.”

Attendees don’t need to be skilled in any particular AI tool—they can use whatever software they want. And if they don’t know where to start, Pirillo suggests Google Gemini or ChatGPT. At the end of the day, it’s less about the tools and more about freeing themselves from startup paralysis and vibe coding a solution to a simple problem they have.

“If there’s a touchstone…it’s vibe coding: What’s it all about? How do I start? I’m stuck—how do I get unstuck? How do I use this tool? How do I contextualize this tool with another? When you put people in the same room with one another, you get those conversations,” he shares.

Pirillo’s next CTRL+ALT+CREATE vibe coding workshop is free to attend and runs from noon to 2 p.m. PST. While it’s live in Seattle, there promises to be a livestream, and all ages are welcome. All that’s needed is a laptop and a problem to solve. The afternoon is sponsored by Every and Google Jules, and one attendee will have a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card.