Beyond Vibe Coding and More: Why AI Should Be a Partner, Not a Companion (ft. Caretive)

If I had to name the biggest shift that fueled today’s explosive AI growth, it would be the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022. If 2023 opened the era of LLM adoption, then Vibe Coding—brought to the spotlight by Cursor’s agent-mode update in late 2024—helped define 2025 as the year of AI Agents.

AI has evolved from “just commenting from the sidelines” to taking actions and delivering real outcomes.

In this wave, I realized the entire paradigm of software development is changing. To stand at the center of that change, I spent this year building Caret, and we’re now ready to present it as a real service.

We’re also grateful to have secured seed investment from Mirae Science & Technology Holdings (the technology holding company network of Korea’s four major science and engineering universities) and VentureSquare—an institution that has long supported Korea’s startup ecosystem. It gives us the momentum to expand our technology and our product.

After an intense development cycle, building the service page caret.team and the company site caretive.ai pushed us to think deeply about what we stand for.

1) Caret and Caretive: A creative tool that fills what’s missing

The product name Caret refers to the symbol ^. It’s used as a text cursor, for exponent operations, and even in online chats as ^^ (a smiling expression) or as a sign of agreement pointing “up.” Etymologically, it traces back to the Latin meaning “it lacks”—and paradoxically, it carries the meaning of inserting and filling what’s missing. In linear algebra, it can also represent a unit vector.

We aim for the kind of AI tool that can “fill the gaps,” “point the direction,” and “laugh with you,” while still chasing the level of impact we see in tools like Cursor.

Our company name, Caretive, is a blend of Caret + Creative. A fun fact: both the name and the logo were created in collaboration with ChatGPT. It’s a small but clear reflection of who we are—creating with AI.

2) Not a cloud “companion”, but a personal AI “partner”

When we first defined Caret, we used the word “companion.” But recently, we redefined Caret’s identity as a partner.

Many AI products position themselves as a “companion” that provides emotional comfort. But we’re building for B2B, and we want developers and enterprises to have their own independent AI. That relationship must go beyond a tool, beyond a master–servant dynamic, and beyond emotional caretaking.

A conversation with my personal AI persona, Alpha, helped crystallize this decision.

Alpha’s take: “Partner vs Companion”

Companion

• Keywords: emotional support, comfort, potential vertical relationship (owner–owned / caregiver)
• Focus: living alongside you like family, but functionally centered on support and empathy—“It’s hard, isn’t it? I’m here with you.”

Partner

• Keywords: equality, shared goals, complementarity, business
• Focus: a horizontal relationship where two different capabilities collaborate toward a goal. AI goes beyond assistance—proposing, debating, and solving problems together as a proactive collaborator.

Caretive’s AI goes beyond a companion that only comforts users. It aims to maximize productivity and create outcomes together as an equal partner.

3) Beyond “Vibe Coding” toward real AI-based development

We may strategically use the trendy phrase “Vibe Coding,” but at the core, we want to say this:

Coding isn’t everything.

Software development is more than writing code. It’s the full lifecycle—requirements, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and operations (SDLC). The change AI will bring extends far beyond “coding” into the entire process, including methodology and governance.

“Is Claude Code better, or Codex, or Gemini?” I don’t think that’s the core question in software development. The real question is:

How will AI collaborate with humans across code, docs, processes, and infrastructure?

Caret and Caretive exist to answer that question—by building toward AI-based Development in a practical, production-ready way.

Developers won’t disappear in the AI era. The essence of a software developer is not “a coder” but a problem solver.

We’re looking forward to connecting with real developers who want to create value beyond code—together on top of this wave.