Alastair Bruerton

Senior Product Designer | Design + AI | Ideas, design, and inspiration -

[Cursor @cursor_ai]

Claude Fable 5 is available again in Cursor.

It leads all models on CursorBench, but is the most expensive per task.

[Ridd 🤿 @ridd_design]

I caught up with @MengTo to learn how Codex gives designers superpowers

we go deep into strategies for prompting, animation, design.md files, and a lot more

he even shows how he built his own Notion 😮

[Cursor @cursor_ai]

Introducing Cursor for iOS.

Build from anywhere by launching always-on cloud agents. Or remotely control agents running on your computer from the app.

Composer 2.5 is 75% off in the app now through July 5.

[Josh @joshuawolk]

i made a website to find your painting lookalike

https://t.co/Y1B9zlahth

[Early Aotearoa New Zealand @ZealandEarly]

Lake Brunner Scenic Trail, West Coast. A gem of a trail. Photo from Jan this year.

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

i'm obsessed with AI DIY projects

my favorite one right now is this guy who built an AI system that listens for birds outside his apartment, figures out what species they are, and paints them on his wall.

here's how the whole thing works:

1. a cheap usb mic on his balcony listens for birdsong 24/7

2. BirdNET, Cornell's AI model trained on 6,000+ species, names each bird species from the sound alone (no camera needed)

3. every time it hears one, Gemini 2.5 Flash Image paints that exact bird in the style of an Edo-period japanese woodblock print

4. the new painting drops into a live collage of everything that's been singing outside in the last 24 hours

5. and it all shows up on a framed e-ink display on his wall that reads "heard today" like a little museum placard for his neighborhood

knowing which birds visit you used to take a field guide, a trained ear, plus years of patient practice.

teddy just glances at the frame on his wall and sees the cardinal came back this morning

honestly i'm highly tempted to build one myself haha

[Filip Wojda @filipwojda]

On design and what defines a great design engineer

A design engineer, to me, is someone who should be an artist at heart. Their role is to listen: to the world around them, to culture, to the arts, and to build a bridge that turns people's desires into something they can actually feel and live with. Design isn't a production line. Efficiency was never the point. The work is supposed to mean something, and a designer who treats it as mechanical output has already lost the plot.

They do, however, need a technical foundation. A design engineer should know the caveats of their medium. In the context of web products, that means understanding things like web performance, so that they can make something that doesn't just look right but truly performs and acts well. Great interactions cannot drop frames, a beautiful candle sconce should feel heavy and strong, a font on a poster should set a tone for the message. A great one is not someone who knows a few established design principles and can vibe-code them into life. A great one has real emotional investment in whatever they touch. I have yet to meet a great designer I look up to who doesn't call themselves an artist above all.

The mistake I see companies make constantly is over-indexing on how many projects someone has shipped, or how flashy they look. It's easy to fall for aesthetics going viral on Twitter and call it good design just because it works for a lot of people. Most companies do exactly this. A handful of people set some arbitrary rules, live by them, and preach them like scripture, and everyone else internalizes it as the only truth, with no room for objection. Congratulations you have fallen for groupthink propaganda.

Like I said, great designers are artists. And artists think in systems. How does the world work? Why does it work that way? What changes for the world, for my company, for its message, if I change one thing in this product? Thinking in systems means every pixel, every color, every corner radius has to pay rent. Every choice needs a reason behind it. Obviously when it comes to startups in particular, sometimes you may not have the time to really establish a completely branded design system as much as you wish for it. As long as you are slowly picking up the slack here and there whenever time allows, this is fine to me.

The last thing, and maybe the most important: artists are the most professional haters I've ever met. A great design engineer should be too. Hate other people's work (inside their head, or who knows you can always approach them with a nice conversation lol), interrogate why something is wrong, always reject mediocrity and repetition. The best ideas come from rejecting established patterns, out of pure play, when you force yourself to refrain from using them. If you think about it, this is what holding a great conversation is all about. Design is just a really good conversation.

I posted this passively on my site and quite a few people expressed interest and appreciation so figured I would post here. I hope you take something from this.

[Google Earth @googleearth]

Prepare for takeoff. ✈️ Flight simulator is now available globally on web to all users. https://t.co/hQP0No142P

We've recently added many our most powerful professional desktop features to web. Elevation profiles, new import types, but there's always been one other feature you've been asking us to add to the web version of Google Earth, just for fun...

Where will you fly? Share your best maneuvers, views, and flyovers with us!

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

What does it actually mean to be AI native?

There was no clear guide on the internet for how to become AI native so we built the definitive one (60 min masterclass):

1. An AI native org has 3 layers: people for strategy and taste, agents for execution, and a shared context layer that makes the entire company readable to agents.

2. AI eats the middle of your work. You used to spend 80% of your day on execution. Now agents do that. Your job is the bookends: deciding what to do and judging whether it's good enough.

3. Everyone is a manager now. Your output is the output of your agents. If your agents produce garbage, that's on you. You set them up wrong.

4. Using ChatGPT doesn't make you AI native. That's like having a website and calling yourself a tech company lol.

5. No AI native org without AI native people. Most companies skip straight to the tools. That's why it fails. If your people don't understand how to manage agents, the tech doesn't matter.

6. Making your company "readable" to agents is the real work. Every process, every decision, every piece of knowledge needs to exist in a format an agent can consume. Most companies are nowhere close.

7. Speed without signal is just expensive chaos. You need the system to move fast AND know if you're moving in the right direction.

8. The skill chain is how agents get good at your specific workflows. Skills build on skills. The more you invest in them, the more your company compounds.

9. The moat is the system. People managing agents, agents reading from rich context, the whole thing getting smarter every week. That compounds. Your competitor can copy your tools. They can't copy your system.

Full episode with @TheoTabah from @meetLCA on @startupideaspod. This is the stuff we normally keep internal but all the sauce is yours.

@TheoTabah is the brains behind advising the world's biggest companies on AI and building AI products. Your fav CEO's first call for figuring out AI.

You are in for a treat

Become AI native in under 60 minutes

https://t.co/EzreBHFyIJ

Watch

[signüll @signulll]

in today's keynote, apple produced this really interesting graphic that ironically outlines the core mechanics for a new type of operating system (for perhaps a new class of devices).

you can see how this moves the world from an app based ecosystem to an intent centric world.

i.e. you roughly do not need third party applications in this world at all esp when ai has the ability to construct & deconstruct interfaces / experiences on demand.

[New Zealand Football 🇳🇿 @NZ_Football]

MATCHDAY IN FLORIDA 🇳🇿🇭🇹

We take on Haiti in our first World Cup warmup match today 🏆

🇳🇿🇭🇹 New Zealand v Haiti
⏰ 12PM NZ / 8PM Local
🏟️ Chase Stadium, Florida
🎥 Watch live on TVNZ and FIFA+
🎟️ Tickets: https://t.co/Dzk9LL7IhR

[Isuzu UTE A-League @aleaguemen]

Ain’t no way 🤣😭 Argentine football fans have made a SONG for viral full back Tim Payne!

The Wellington defender has gained 600,000 followers in less than 24 hours and this saga just keeps getting better 😅

[Premier League @premierleague]

2025/26 = ✅🔀

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

Bottle this feeling 🍾

[Early Aotearoa New Zealand @ZealandEarly]

Country road through the Westland bush, 1966. Source: West Coast NZ History
https://t.co/9vVCYgDqJs

[Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps]

There is no other explanation.

[Ben Blumenrose @benblumenrose]

Our 2026 Design in AI Report is now live!

This report is the culmination of thousands of people hours and many late nights to create what we believe is the most comprehensive, well-researched report capturing and synthesizing the state of Design + AI today.

While we used AI in many areas, a report like this still required deep thinking, grit, and humans coming together to do what they do best.

The final report spans nearly 20k words covering the survey results of over 900 people paired with dozens of qualitative interviews.

Over the coming months we will also release 7 beautiful case studies showing how top design teams are working on the ground featuring designers at @AnthropicAI, @framer, @linear, @NotionHQ, @Shopify, @SierraPlatform, and @stripe.

This work is a true labor of love to help guide a design community we hold so dear.

Link in the comments and please let us know what you think. Your feedback helps us shape how we will evolve this work over the coming years...

[Tom Krcha @tomkrcha]

Pencil just crossed 1M downloads on Cursor Extensions marketplace. With Composer 2.5, it's a killer AI design combo. Just flies.

Designs a full website for desktop and mobile sub-minute. Fully editable on canvas inside Cursor. Video at 1x speed.

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

The Arsenal. Your Premier League champions.

[Josh Pigford @Shpigford]

favorite AI design tools/resources that play a regular part in my process as of this singular moment...

1. https://t.co/mbidl6jOHy - Incredible resource AND tools from my buddy @joshpuckett. Probably the most craft-oriented designer I know who's also fully embraced AI as part of their process. Lots to learn from and lots of great tooling to nail UI details.

2. https://t.co/qukNXTRL66 - From @adamwathan and @steveschoger. The /ui skill that comes with this helps immensely with following good design principles and helping your UIs stay more consistent. Also has a killer interactive component that generates multiple iterations of an idea so you can narrow in on exactly what you want.

3. https://t.co/Twz8WpP5Yo - "Pull 20 different error notification states to find common patterns among mobile apps"

4. https://t.co/kaGQsnj7Vg - Incredible tool for generating design systems for use in your apps and in marketing materials. Hard to overstate how good this is.

Honorable mention: https://t.co/bmxeeRRdI3 - I've seen a lot of folks talk about this but just haven't had a chance to try it yet.

(These could all get thrown out the window tomorrow, as is the nature of AI progress.)