Jeff Witters

Design frameworks that let regulated teams ship AI-built software that passes review. eBay, Microsoft, Riot Games, Department of War. Free audit: link below.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

I'm Jeff. I've run Cartisien, a design and engineering studio, since 2007.

What I post about: AI tools now ship screens faster than anyone can review them. The design rules live in someone's head or a 40-page PDF, so the product drifts.

I write about closing that gap with design rules your agents and engineers can actually check against.

If you lead product or engineering at a software company in a regulated space, follow along. And tell me: which screen does your team argue about most?

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@hollylawly Between the cold email bros and the damn MCA text messages wanting to fund me - i rarely check either anymore

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

The customer-facing copy never got reviewed.

The agent wrote the empty state and error message. The team checked the diff, demoed the happy path, and shipped both without reading them in context.

Then support forwarded a screenshot.

Who owns the issue now??

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

Generate a settings screen with AI.

The first version looks finished.

Then a user has no saved preferences, loses access, or needs to undo a change, and the screen has nowhere to go.

The demo looked fast because it skipped the states that make software usable.

Review the empty, error, and recovery states before celebrating the generated UI.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

CSS just got a random() function. Most products have been shipping it for years.

Smashing pitches it for playful imperfection, which is fine on a portfolio site. But in your product, random is already the house style. The agent picks a corner radius per screen, the settings pages use three slightly different grays, and the ticket about it got closed as won't fix.

Imperfection is only playful when somebody chose it. Nobody at your company chose that gray.

Heads of product: name one visual value in your app that someone decided on purpose this year. I'll wait.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@MTorygreen The app layer is crowded, but the picks and shovels bill keeps growing.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@maoconsult511 Patch speed matters the most right now, but agent permissions are the boundary no one knows how to get right. Its all a crap shoot at this point.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@aaliya_va @GammaApp I feel like a lot of apps people build solve a very specific problem close to the builder/founder.

They see the signal is so loud they think it resonates with everyone, and everyone already understands what their solution does.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@JonBuildsHQ Marketing / Sales - we are builders.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@themgmtconsult GTM problem are a real struggle, a super big worry for most and just going to intensify

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@samongaro_ When do the ubiquitous MRR posts on X start in that flow?

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

"The new brand is approved. Why is engineering asking for six weeks?"

Because the old blue is typed directly into files nobody remembers, plus the email templates and the PDF invoices. Rebrands don't fail in the deck. They fail in the codebase, and the new logo ends up live next to the old buttons for a while.

CMOs planning a rebrand: before the agency presents, ask engineering how many places the brand color is written down.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@Taniyatweets_ Codex remembering project context between sessions would get my attention.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@bendee983 Patch latency is becoming an uptime problem, not just a security one.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@YashHustle_22 Restraint is now the hard part.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@tech_nurgaliyev It gets useful when the ops manager can update the SOPs himself.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@AnkanXplorer The diff is where you find out if you understand what shipped.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@pmitu Getting specialists and insurers to coordinate is the hard part. Does Vene handle the calls too?

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@vineerpasam I'd rather unpack the 10,000-call assumptions than whiteboard a hashmap.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@GohilHardy It may be following the nearest example, not the system.

[Jeff Witters @JeffWitters]

@CobaltHere The check needs to be tied to the exact working tree, not just the result.