How I Design with AI

reactiverobot 21 points 12 comments August 28, 2026
ref.tools · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (6 comments)

seizethecheese

The insight about agents loving to add stuff is spot on for more than just design. They'll do this for technical architecture, adding unnecessary guards, complexity to cover irrelevant edge cases. They'll do this for writing too, unnecessary caveats, clarifications, etc.

firemelt

anyone know how to design webapp effectively using claude design? because I feel always end up with similar web designs everytime I tell claude to revamp my web app

yipinwong

This feels like it can be a "skill" :) Anyways, one thing to point out is the "constraints". Constraints are something you cannot change (and AI should abide to it). I liked the fact that the author used "add" or "remove", and not used "modify/update" because constraints should be added or removed only unlike non-functional requirements, which can be modified. --- The author's recommneded book "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" looks cool (will check it out)

esafak

My pain point is that design tools imitate Figma in using JSON to represent the design, which originates in JS, but without rendering it into HTML and CSS to get a pixel perfect representation. Instead, the MCP imagines what the JSON will be, and it is never perfect. So the existing tools can't even go in one direction accurately. None of them let you edit the 'rendered' visual and reflect it accurately back to code, or sync with Figma. There is money to be made.

Vishal_Max

Thanks for sharing this, mate. Lately, I’ve been trying to design some websites completely using AI as side projects, and all I’ve gotten is disappointment at how AI-ish the websites can look and how easily people get repelled just by seeing them.

Gualdrapo

This kinda sounds like so-called "design thinking" but with ai and extra steps

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