I don’t use AI. I build with it.
A chatbot answers questions. I build the systems that do the work — and I bring the judgment that makes them right.
I’m a product designer. Over the last year I’ve used AI to build a design system, a self-healing backup that runs while I sleep, a dozen apps, and the very site you’re reading this on. None of it was prompt-and-paste. This is how I actually work with AI — and why.
The instinct came first. The tools just caught up.
The pattern is always the same. I needed something and no tool did it well, so I built it. I wanted to see an app exist, so I made a concept to find out what it would do. I build to make my life easier — and to chase the things I love.
SaberIQcame from wanting to teach my nephew the subtleties of baseball — a game I love — so I built him a way to see them.
The backup system came from needing my work to survive a bad day. Same instinct, pointed at a different problem.
I don’t hand it the wheel. I pair with it.
The shift that changed everything was refusing to treat AI as a fancier autocomplete.
A pair, not an oracle. I stay the one who decides — which is exactly where the next part comes in.
Judgment is the scarce resource now — not production.
Here’s what most people miss: AI collapses the cost of making the artifact. It does nothing to the cost of deciding what’s correct.
So the work moved — less production, more deciding. That’s not a downgrade. It’s the most senior thing a designer does, finally made visible.
Five moves that turn a fast tool into a trustworthy one.
Aim at infrastructure, not artifacts
Anyone can get an AI to make a button. The leverage compounds when you aim it higher — at the infrastructure that keeps a whole system honest.
Specs are the leverage
A vague prompt gets a mediocre component; a sharp standard gets a system. Writing the standard is the skill.
Verify — never trust the “done”
It has told me components were fixed that weren’t, and told me things were backed up that weren’t. My eyes caught what its own scans cleared. Speed without a gate is just faster drift.
Correct the system, not the instance
When it gets something wrong, I make it encode the distinction — so the same mistake can’t come back next time.
Restraint
When AI makes iteration nearly free, the scarce thing isn’t production — it’s restraint. Knowing what not to ship is the taste.
Not theory — the actual work.
A technical path and a creative one, plus the design engine underneath both. Each of these is becoming its own case study — linked here as they land.
Good work shouldn’t need permission to survive.
I build with AI as infrastructure — and as a way to chase what I love. The tools got faster. The judgment is still mine.