Why Vibe Planning could be the next big shift in enterprise decision-making

Vibe coding took the tech world by storm this year. AI researcher Andrej Karpathy captured the idea simply: describe what you want in plain language, let AI generate most of the code, and iterate from there. The concept quickly moved beyond startups, with large enterprises leaning in too. Engineering leaders began reporting a fast rise in AI-generated code across their teams, and the numbers back it up. According to GitHub's India Developer Survey, 99% of Indian developers have already tried AI coding tools at work, signalling how quickly "prompt-to-product" is becoming the norm.

While businesses are not yet run entirely on vibes, appetite for agentic AI is growing fast. According to a May 2025 PwC survey, 79% of senior business executives say they have already deployed agentic AI in some form within their organisations.

One area where this shift carries weight is integrated business planning (IBP). Indian enterprises today must simultaneously manage modern trade, general trade, quick commerce, and highly localised regional demand, often pulling in different directions. For planning teams navigating that complexity, the case for AI-augmented planning is hard to ignore. Think of it as "vibe planning": tapping into real-time data and an AI-automated IBP loop to get a sharper read on the market and make faster, better-informed decisions, with governance built in from the start.

Vibe planning works across three layers. The first is (i)picking up weak signals early, things like social chatter, short-cycle demand shifts, and store-level POS (point of sale) data. The second is structured planning, where one set of numbers drives alignment across demand, supply, finance, and procurement. The third is agentic execution with guardrails, where AI proposes the scenarios, policies define the boundaries, and humans retain approval authority.

How the Vibe Planning Cycle Works in Practice

• Sensing is where it starts. An AI-enabled platform ingests signals across multiple time horizons, from POS and order data to marketing calendars, weather, and social trends. In India, this could mean flagging a demand spike for a regional SKU ahead of a festival or detecting a packaging lead-time risk from a supplier in the north.

• Hypothesising comes next. Agents propose a demand hypothesis, say a 15% shift from a standard biscuit SKU to a limited-edition variant ahead of Diwali, along with potential supply moves and gross margin implications. Each hypothesis references the supporting evidence and expected KPI impact.

• Simulating lets planners stress-test the options. Agents model constrained versus unconstrained supply, promotion versus baseline demand, and carbon-aware versus fastest-ship routing, surfacing sensitivities across service levels, inventory, and EBIT. For a D-Mart managing variable demand across hundreds of locations, this kind of real-time scenario visibility matters.

• Deciding is where human judgment takes over. Planners review a decision brief covering assumptions, confidence levels, trade-offs, and policy checks such as capacity caps and minimum safety stock. Each brief includes a decision time frame, so approvals do not age out while market conditions shift.

• Acting and learning close the loop. When a scenario gets the go-ahead, it moves straight into action across procurement, fulfilment, pricing, and inventory. From there, agents track how things play out versus what was expected, refine their models accordingly, and keep a running log of every call made, useful both for audits and for building organisational memory over time.

How Vibe Planning Sits Apart from Traditional IBP

Vibe planning reduces siloed trade-offs. Finance, commercial, supply chain, and sustainability teams see the same impact curve covering service, inventory, emissions, and margin before committing. For Indian conglomerates where these functions often operate in separate cadences, that shared visibility changes the nature of the conversation entirely.

It also shifts reconciliation from a monthly rhythm to a continuous one. IBP remains the single source of truth, but scenarios update as signals change rather than waiting for the next review cycle. In a market where a raw material price spike or a logistics disruption can materialise within days, that responsiveness is increasingly a necessity.

And it replaces spreadsheet-based planning with explainable agents that cite evidence, not just numbers. Every recommendation answer: why this, why now? That context lets planners move faster without sacrificing rigour.

Key Practices for Enterprises Ready to Make the Move

Define your signal library first. Start by identifying the six to ten data feeds that move the needle for your business: distributor sell-out data, kirana-level POS, weather alerts, raw material ETAs, and competitor pricing. Before you let any agent loose, write the rules down first. Capacity limits, order quantities, service tier priorities, and cash constraints. The guardrails need to exist before the automation does. Build decision SLAs so every scenario type has a defined approver and escalation path. Pilot in one category or region, prove the cycle-time improvement, then scale horizontally.

Most importantly, invest in planning talent alongside technology. Vibe planning rewards teams that understand demand, supply and finance deeply. The organisations that treat this as a people-and-technology shift, not just a software rollout, will pull furthest ahead.

The Opportunity

India's best-run enterprises have long competed on execution. The next edge will come from decision velocity. As quick commerce compresses consumer expectations and supply chains face pressure from climate and geopolitical shocks, the gap between companies that plan in real time and those that do not will only grow. Agentic AI in IBP will not replace the planner or the monthly review. It will make both faster and more accountable. The discipline of integrated planning stays intact. What changes is the speed at which it operates, and in India's market, that compounds quickly.

Igor Rikalo