Building disposable UI
The AI builds the mockup and a control panel for it in the same file. Twenty minutes of sliders, export the settings as JSON, throw the mockup away.
People ask how I tweak the details.
For years the answer was Chrome DevTools. Nudge a padding value in the inspector, get it right, then lose track of what I changed. Figma on the rare occasion I needed to think in shapes.
Now I ask for something else. The AI builds the mockup and a control panel for that mockup in the same file. Not a design. A machine that makes designs. The one behind this site's refresh carried 45 knobs: five colors, three font stacks, the spacing scale, corner radius, motion timing, and the copy itself.
Then I stop designing and start turning. Twenty minutes of sliders lands somewhere I could not have specified up front, because I could not have described it before I saw it.
The panel does not tell me which direction is right. It only helps once I am already in the right neighborhood. Taste picks the direction. The knobs make it exact.
When it is right I export the settings as JSON and throw the mockup away. Eleven labs, 73 mockups, every one built to be deleted.
The code is disposable. The decisions are what I keep.
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- ai
- design
- craft