The Kids Are Vibe Coding
Announcing our Edge Tomorrow x Vibe Code Residency collab at Edge Esmeralda 2026 🌞
What happens when we let the kids cook?
Last summer at Edge Esmeralda, one amazing kid built a dragon-fighting game using the latest AI coding tools. Then demoed it to 100+ people. Jaws dropped. Later in the month, a five-year-old built a QR code generator that replaced a $10/month subscription his community was paying for. He said it was easy.
At our Vibe Code Residency in Patagonia last fall, two twelve-year-old girls designed an app that gave kids control over their parents’ screen time. We built a Vibe Arcade featuring 20+ original games (all built by kids!) Towards the end of the month, we then hosted a kids’ demo day that left every adult in the room rethinking what they thought they knew about AI, learning, and the potential of these kids (as well as themselves) in this new world.
None of these kids had deep engineering backgrounds. None of them were “gifted” in the way schools use that word. They had an idea, access to the right tools, and an environment that took them seriously.
Some kids at Edge City in Thailand nearly two years ago built a future city out of clay and their ideas!
This June, we’re doing it again - but bigger, deeper, and with more real infrastructure behind it.
What’s Different This Time
From May 30 through June 27, the Vibe Code Residency and a kid-centered creative residency, Edge Tomorrow, are running simultaneously inside Edge Esmeralda in Healdsburg, California.
More kids are already signed up than ever before, and more spots are available! Adults and kids will be building real products with their own creative agency - and at least twice a week, they can build together at the Vibe Coding House.
A founder refining her SaaS prototype sits next to a ten-year-old designing a game. They’re using the same AI tools. They present on the same stage. The ten-year-old’s demo gets a standing ovation - and for their next projects, the two decide to team up.
We’re designing the entire program around making this serendipity happened consistently, and organically.
Why Vibe Coding?
Vibe coding is a new way to build software - a game, an app, a personal assistant, or a new tool - by speaking with AI, making it accessible to anyone. In other words, you describe what you want and it starts to appear. We can literally dream out loud now, and build at the speed of intuition…the gap between imagination and creation has collapsed.
This means anyone can build real things without a traditional engineering team - founders, operators, and kids side by side. A dream city sketched in cardboard can become a virtual place anyone can explore, or a cast of community AI characters can bring stories to life. The shift is not just “learning to code,” but realizing you can turn imagination into shared, real experiences.
What a Week Looks Like
Ages 7–12 follow a self-directed project arc. Each week has a rhythm:
Monday/Tuesday: Explore. Kids start with questions, start exploring the environment, and launch small experiments. Together they define projects they will create for the village.
Wednesday: Kid teams working on projects that call for AI tools participate in crossover sessions with the Vibe Code Residency. They build side by side with adult founders, sharing techniques, giving each other feedback.
Thursday: Iteration and polish. Refine the build. Practice presenting.
Friday: Demo day. Kids can present to the community — the same stage, the same audience, the same respect given to every adult presenter.
Younger children (2.5 to 6) spend their days in nature-based exploration at a well loved creative arts camp nearby.
What Kids Leave With
Something they built - a game, an app, a tool - that actually works
The lived experience of shipping a creative project to a real audience (and their friends!)
A special community of high-agency people that believe in them and take their ideas seriously
Creative confidence - and a comfort with AI as a creative instrument + force for good
For Families
Healdsburg is the right place for this. Small enough that kids can walk to the plaza on their own. Safe enough that parents can actually exhale. Beautiful enough that everyone remembers what a thriving community and village feels like.
You’re not choosing between your work and your family. You’re doing both, in the same village, with the same creative energy.
Family crossover moments are built into the design: shared meals, joint demo days, evening showcases. Your kid might demo something that changes how you think about your own work. :)
The Bigger Picture
The jobs today’s children will hold don’t fully exist yet. The tools they’re using today didn’t exist a year ago. School was designed to prepare obedient workers for known systems. Those systems are changing faster than curricula can keep up.
Kids with enough agency and the right environment are capable of things that we can’t even dream of yet.
What’s needed now isn’t more screen time or less screen time. It’s the ability to use these tools with intention - to ask better questions, to design your own path, to be the architect of the life you actually want.
Everyone is a builder now - arrive with a dream, and leave with something real.
Get Involved
→ Apply for Edge Esmeralda - sign up and see the full vision for the month here!
→ Apply + get in touch with the Vibe Code Residency - questions, partnership inquiries, groupchat access, or just say hi
→ Apply to be a Project Lab Facilitator - work with Mitra on the kids’ residency!
Know a family or organization that needs to be here? Send them this post. :)
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This is fascinating. My grandson is doing coding. He is 16.
Super fun recap! Can't wait to see the kids in action again in June!