You're right that it's a spectrum. Just like anything else, you can be 'mostly' vibe coding or 'somewhat' vibe coding. But the threshold where it stops being vibe coding isn't entirely subjective.
If you are trusting the AI's logic and primarily verifying the output (the app runs, the button works), you are vibe coding. If you are reading the diffs, verifying the architecture, you are transitioning back toward engineering. Any sincere developer knows where they are sitting on that spectrum.
You say the threshold is not entirely subjective, but then you describe a subjective (you just know it) and ambiguous (transitioning back toward engineering) threshold.
Sure seems to me like it's subjective.
Also, I've nedlver ever heard so much talk about "verifying architecture" as when people talk about vibe coding.
That's not something you usually do. The architecture is the overall structure of a design, and has to be elaborated into functional designs and interface contracts before you have something you can verify in actual code. The architecture itself is very much an intangible thing. "Verifying architecture" in diffs is nonsense, and is definitely not engineering.
Hm you could do like five degrees of vibecoding. Level one. You laboriously still look at the code and the diffs being generated.
Level two: You sometimes look at the code being generated. You have a feel for how the classes are architected together but don't know the details. Level 4. You're aware of the classes and files in use, but beyond that, you have no idea what's going on.
Level 5. You just spit stuff at the LLM and have it shit out code that you have zero clue what it's doing. You don't even know if you're using react or not!
If you are trusting the AI's logic and primarily verifying the output (the app runs, the button works), you are vibe coding. If you are reading the diffs, verifying the architecture, you are transitioning back toward engineering. Any sincere developer knows where they are sitting on that spectrum.