Notes from practice.
Short notes on product design, design systems, and working with AI. Written between accounts, when something is worth writing down.
7 notes
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The model did the producing. Catching what it got wrong was the job.
A civic reporting product built end to end with AI: a skill library of 15 chapters and 119 services, two demos that actually run, and a stutter that took five measured recordings to trace to a single CSS rule I had written myself.
7 min read -
Your design system is no longer written for people
Figma's MCP server hands an agent your variables and your Code Connect map — not your usage guidance. What a model can see of a design system has narrowed to names, values and mappings, and a coverage gap no longer produces inconsistency. It produces invention.
4 min read -
AI moved into the product. Is the application still there?
Figma and Miro put the assistant inside the canvas. Sketch put it outside, behind a local MCP server that is off until you switch it on. Two opposite bets on where AI belongs in a product — and what each one costs the application.
5 min read -
Codex vs Claude Code: notes from building one site with both
I built this site with OpenAI's Codex and everything since with Claude Code. Where ChatGPT is still better for me, why a dropping Sketch MCP connection made me switch, and why the tool does not decide the outcome.
3 min read -
The only AI tool I use — and how it reaches Figma, GitHub and Vercel
Most AI tool lists for designers have fifteen entries. Mine has one, connected over MCP to the tools I already work in. What that setup looks like on two real projects, and where it stops being useful.
4 min read -
Will AI replace product designers? A working answer
It will not replace designers, but it will replace a description of the job many were quietly relying on. What actually got faster, what did not, and who stays accountable for what ships.
3 min read -
From 1×, 2×, 3× to fifteen minutes: how design handoff disappeared
In 2013 interface assets were exported by hand at every screen density and emailed to developers. In 2026 a prompt returns a running app. What Sketch, Zeplin, Figma and prompt-to-app tools each removed — and what they did not.
5 min read