Artemi Vaarakallio

building so design engineers can edit the running product. writing about ai tools, code-driven design, and shipping.

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

silt's design mode edits the interface your users actually live in. not a mock, not a copy of it. the running thing.

point at any element and the rulers come up. start scrubbing and you see the vertical and horizontal alignment as you drag, so getting something level is one gesture instead of a guess.

the old way was describing it to an agent and waiting. write a paragraph, wait, then find out it edited the wrong component. here you point at the thing first, so it always knows exactly which component you mean.

that's the difference. micro-edits that used to cost minutes each now cost seconds, and those are exactly the edits that take an interface from sloppy to intentional.

filmed w/ @shotbaseapp

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@AdamWhitcroft is game ui the part the llm still can't help with, or the part you won't hand over?

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

working with agents is overwhelming, there's sometimes just too much happening at once to keep track of.

for v2 of silt - we've understood this bc we've talked to so many of you all.

the design for v2 will be calm, minimal, and designed to help you design with multiple agents in parallel but without losing your sh*t.

i'm so excited! DM me and when we release the mac app you'll be the first one to know and you get to shape this with us.

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@OpenDesignHQ which one needed fewer follow up prompts to land it

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@joebell_ does it handle the safe area stuff too or just the backdrop

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@Tanjim38 was that one long run or a lot of back n forth

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@zack_overflow when you pick a fix for a failing size does that become a new proof or just a one-off tweak

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@maria_rcks does it write back into the file or only read from it

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@higgsfield_ai i'd wanna see which one makes the game less annoying to change on pass two

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@vanschneider the one that keeps the canvas n code in sync wins for me

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@jasonkneen the applet bit feels right. regenerating the whole app for one preference sounds cursed

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

designing with parallel agents means every direction is a real branch of your repo. you don't pick a favorite picture, you pick a favorite build

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@tomjohndesign small eval rigs beat staring at the full scene every time. fix the ordering rule once n the whole thing stops drifting

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@ridd_design @NevFlynn the hard part is making the interaction survive contact w the real product. new pattern only matters if the system can keep it coherent

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

day 2 of the prototype and strangers are sending me their design-tool wishlists unprompted. every single one wants the same thing: design systems that live in the codebase, not in figma

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

ai can generate a ui in 2 hours. then you spend 100 polishing it bc the code has no design system behind it. the bottleneck was never generation

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@rubenhume the line is probably owning production code

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@alexgilev @figma the ds context is where the speed comes from

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@moguzbulbul design engineer is fair if the output ships

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@vercel_dev real design systems finally enter the generation loop

[Artemi Vaarakallio @aaapinen]

@wesbos reuse vs new markup is the whole trust boundary