starting the garden

in taking over product at vanilla, i’ve been trying to keep up with the pace of change, not just in design but in how we actually build things. the tools, the process, the way small teams work. companies like linear keep showing what’s possible when design, engineering, and product are all in sync and that’s the kind of team i want us to be.

as i’ve been thinking about how to get there, ai has become a critical part of it. it’s the thing making that kind of speed and craft possible. and i’m not just thinking about it for work, i’m seeing it firsthand while teaching web and code to students at calarts. the flattening of responsibilities is real, and to me, it’s exciting. it means designers, engineers, and pm’s can all get closer to the actual making. it’s a chance for people to lean into their specialties instead of hiding behind titles.

one of the bigger changes i’ve been pushing is getting both pm’s and designers closer to code through claude. this week i decided it was time to dive in myself. after watching a demo of how anthropic’s design team uses figma’s mcp and claude code to prototype directly in code, i finally sat down and built the portfolio site i’ve been wanting to make for years (literally took a figma project i started on a flight 3 years ago).

i’ve always been obsessed with pkms. i was an early obsidian user, tried roam, even started building my own zettelkasten after reading how to take smart notes by sönke ahrens. the hardest part for me has always been balance. i always get lost in building the system instead of capturing the idea. in a way, platforms like tumblr, are.na, and even x really work for me as the idea was the point not the system around it.

so it’s been a dream for a while to have a space of my own like that again (rip live journal). a place to post loose ideas, more polished writing, or just things i don’t want to forget.

when i teach the beginning web class, we start with a short history of the early internet: geocities, angelfire, myspace, that era when people made weird little websites just for the fun of it. in a lot of ways, this feels like a return to that. as i’ve weened myself off social media, i still have the urge to share, just without the noise or performative aspect of it.

learning to build this site through claude code literally felt magical. like the first time i learned to code, but lighter. it’s familiar but obviously much easier. i don’t feel limited by what i don’t know but just in what i could articulate myself.

this is all really exciting for me, i hope i can bring others along.