With Silicon Valley recruiting activity at an all time high, many curious workers have noticed a new sentence begin to take over job postings: Candidates who don't believe in 7 Vibe 3 need not apply. But what is 7 Vibe 3, and why are so many tech companies adopting it? We spoke with founders and workers alike to find out.

The kind of pressure on you nowadays can be impossible for some to keep up with, explained Dylan McLean, founder of OctoNet. Even with AI boosting productivity 100x, if you aren't working every day of the week, you're holding the whole company back. 7 Vibe 3 is a way to make sure we all take responsibility. It's not for everyone, but we don't want everyone — we want believers, dreamers, and builders.

The term appears to follow from 996, a lifestyle known for its long hours and enforced dedication to one's company. The 72-hour work week, which runs from 9 am to 9 pm for 6 days a week, has been commonly used in the Chinese market as part of efforts to innovate into a world-leading nation, no matter the cost. But since the advent of AI, the U.S. tech industry has seized on a new term to replace 996: 7 Vibe 3.

The founder of YouLife, who agreed to an interview under the terms that we refer to her with the mononym Becky, confirmed that 996 is old news — if you're still on that slacker mindset, you just won't keep up. Everyone I believe in works 7 Vibe 3.

7 Vibe 3 attempts to combine the fast-paced workflow of AI-powered development with the 4-day work week that some claim is better for employee health, morale, and productivity.

It's basically like, you spend 7 days a week working, but only 4 of those are in the office. The other 3, you can stay at home and vibe-code from your phone, Becky explained. There's no question it's the most productive the team's ever been. We've never seen token burn numbers like this before.

Vibe-coding is the practice of creating software soley by talking to generative AI. It's done by providing an AI with English descriptions of tasks to perform, without overseeing the code it produces. As such, vibe-coding can be done through conversation with any internet-connected device, rather than needing a computer and keyboard to code by hand.

But how do workers feel about this policy that requires them to vibe-code from home 3 days a week?

I actually feel like it gives me more free time than ever, revealed Jacob Cushner. I get home late Thursday night to get some sleep and look forward to my long weekend. When I wake up I feel super energised and I'm already prompting before I even get out of bed.

The wife wants to go out for brunch, and on the drive I'm brainstorming with ChatGPT in voice mode. Or if we're watching a movie, I message Claude during the introduction. So when it gets to the part where things are crashing into each other and exploding, I can turn off my phone and leave Claude to build the whole time. I feel more productive than ever, and now I see my kid three days a week. It's a win-win.

Will Hong, an employee at Stella AI, agreed. It's such a relief to get out of those fluorescent lights and take a jog through nature, and with 7 Vibe 3, I can do that more often than I ever could with 9-to-5. I found a forest trail that has 5G reception, so Claude talks with me smoothly the whole way. It's shipping features at full speed, and if I ever see a cool stick insect or something, I ask about it and it spins up some subagents to tell me about the creature's ecosystem. I'm not sure if it's hallucinating, because for whatever reason it keeps saying everything's endangered due to struggling with warmer climates, but I'm sure the next model update will sort that one out.

Cathy Monovich, another Stella AI worker, explained that she enjoyed playing video games to relax, but they just consume you so completely, all your senses, visual and auditory and motor and focus. I couldn't keep up with what the AI was building and it was waiting on me. I wasn't making metrics. I had to code a FFXIV bot that followed me around and wouldn't cooperate during the raids until I replied to the AI. Well I should say we coded it; bit of a jam sesh with Codex.

While reception of this novel way of working received broadly positive support for its revolutionary approach, not everyone we spoke to was convinced.

I feel like it's really straining our relationship, said Liz Carter. My husband and I are both on 7 Vibe 3, but on the days off, we don't even talk to each other any more. We're both too busy on ChatGPT, and sometimes he gets annoyed at it and speaks too loudly and my Chat picks it up, and we can have a little fight about him poisoning my context window. We had to buy a longer dinner table and sit at opposite ends of it to get out of range of the other's phone.

Another worker at a Fortune 500 company, speaking on condition of anonymity, had a more scathing review of the concept. Sure, I feel like a superhero for everything I build on the weekend, but by the time I get into the office, the rate limits are totally used up. I spend the other 4 days in a cubicle cleaning up load-bearing spaghetti by hand.

Given its largely welcome reception, 7 Vibe 3 is clearly here to stay, and will continue to have a transformative effect on how startups work in the near future. Those apprehensive about the widespread adoption of the practice will either have to deal with it, or work at a legacy software shop, but those are still continuing to dwindle. AI At Work's latest report has shown generative AI reaching 96% adoption among California businesses, with 100% not far off the horizon. It seems that for the remaining 4% committed to doing things the old-fashioned way, the message is clear: either adapt to stay relevant, or fall behind into obscurity.

At press time, Becky followed up to say she was looking into something she called 7 Vibe 2.