Arnie

head of design @gte_xyz. previously @ready_co

[Arnie @arnasgold]

@LSDinmycoffee came for the tech, stayed for the money

[Arnie @arnasgold]

What if instead of apps and websites we build specialized agents and that becomes the new frontend for the actual infra? Like behind many apps or websites (not all ofc) there is access to certain data, multiple APIs of various services etc, all the things that a generic agent wouldn’t be able to access because it’s gated. As someone technical you can probably get that specific API access by yourself, use MCPs and let your generic agent do what you need, but I feel like a non technical person won’t know the services and data they need to provide to their agent for good judgement and high quality, specialized output.

Like at that point it all becomes about us orchestrating multiple tools and agent capabilities in a way that forms a coherent expertise. Non technical users would still interact with these services, not by clicking and going through complex flows but by asking the agent to use it for them.

[Arnie @arnasgold]

@shadcn I don’t think you can copy “taste”. You can copy something WITH “taste” though

[Arnie @arnasgold]

@foobiusV make it a sour milk and I'm booking direct flights to Canada

[Arnie @arnasgold]

How many times I've tried to rebuild TPO charts... Now, with the recent models, it's a breeze!

One of the reasons to build a custom charting library is that it gives an opportunity to work on bespoke micro-interactions that may help newer traders understand various concepts better. In this case a smooth interpolation between the collapsed and expanded states reveals that it's the same price action in tetris mode.

[Arnie @arnasgold]

found the one we should stress-test with

[Arnie @arnasgold]

The next 100 master clickers will be made on @GTE_XYZ

[Arnie @arnasgold]

The next 100 master clickers will be made on @GTE_XYZ

[Arnie @arnasgold]

Good take. I keep seeing this framed as AI taking the work away, and I think it’s actually the opposite. It hands you the fast part for free, and the whole question becomes what you do with the time.

Design has always been fast and slow. Fast iterations, quick feedback, cheap answers about what doesn’t work. Then slow iterations, long feedback loops, and that’s where the depth actually shows up. Knowing which one you’re in is most of the job.

When I started as a logo designer in 2008, everything was slow compared to today. I was sketching logos on paper during class and rushing home to trace them in Illustrator. I’d start from a blank canvas, go through a lengthy process that required a lot of patience, and only at the end would I find out whether the idea was any good in the first place. Even the fast thinking had to move at the speed of the slow tools. I don’t think the grinding is what gave me taste. Taste came from feedback on what worked, and the loop was just brutally long.

Now the fast is genuinely fast. I can get to something I can react to, in almost any medium, in an afternoon. That’s not the same as knowing an idea is good — it’s a much faster way to find out it isn’t. Which is exactly what the fast feedback loop is for.

But the slow loop hasn’t gotten faster, and it shouldn’t. It’s still the interval where your judgment is the only judgment in the room. What’s changed is that you now have to choose to enter it, because nothing is forcing you there anymore. At GTE I once watched a fast UI iteration get agreed on in ten minutes. It was good, and it was good at what it was for. But the tell for me was that the room agreed and nothing about it surprised me. That’s not a decision, it’s a convergence — the work was legible enough that nobody objected. So we went slow on it instead. Four months later it’s a different piece of software, and the version we’d all agreed on in ten minutes is nowhere in it.

I never felt like people want to work with me because I name my layers or because my use of shadows is top notch. It is in fact the opposite, I’m a messy person. People who chose to work with me did so because of my ideas and taste. And that’s not to say I have amazing ideas or taste, but that I trust them, and trust that I can execute on them by using the right medium and tools.

So when Gal’s client makes a great logo with Fable, I don’t see a designer being replaced. I see a designer being handed the fast loop, for free, on the first try. That logo is an iteration. It’s the cheapest one anybody in this story has ever gotten. The move is to take it as an input and go slow on it — to ask what it doesn’t know, what everything at that baseline has in common, what it would take to push past it.

It’s an easy thing to miss. The fast loop returns something competent and it looks like an answer. It isn’t. It’s a starting position, and the option to go slow from there is the most valuable thing anyone has been given in this whole cycle.

[Dylan Field @zoink]

I have been thinking about whether to comment on this. Not clear if Gal is serious, rage baiting, etc. Whatever the case, it has spread enough in the design community that I want to share some thoughts.

The psychological journey people go through with AI is quite fascinating to me. A new model launches, people think the world has changed, they sometimes have an existential crisis, then they play with the model, they understand its strengths and limitations and then they settle down. A few weeks later, the cycle repeats.

On top of this, even before AI, designers have often shown insecurity and imposter syndrome. There are probably many reasons for this. First, before ~2010 design wasn't valued by the tech industry in the way it is today. Second, the people attracted to working in the field of design are often very open to new ideas and have high empathy. Third, there is no "one path" to working as a designer and designer backgrounds are often pretty random.

Ironically, despite the insecurity + imposter syndrome so many designers feel, design is more important than ever. I truly believe this. And yes, I have an incentive to believe this. But just think about it... the logic couldn't be more clear. More design is entering the world, the attention economy is real and therefore creativity / design / point of view is how you will stand out. Your brand, marketing, product design, moments of delight and overall customer journey must be excellent. Some companies already get this and are fighting wild battles over design talent. Other companies are still figuring it out. Everyone will get there and it will be obvious in retrospect.

This isn't a new trend with AI. It is a trend that we've seen over the last decade. Designers used to complain about not having a seat at the table. Now designers have a seat at the table. And many of the businesses I speak with are pulling from their design bench when looking for new leaders for their business... they know that design thinking and the design process is what they need to adopt everywhere to win.

I'm not saying that every stakeholder gets it. But so many are trying to learn right now. Designers need to do more than create great work, they have to spend a lot more effort educating.

Showing work can also trigger anxiety. Sometimes the best solution to a design challenge is the first thing you think of. And other times you have to explore for quite a long time to come up with something great. Inputs to a design process might include things that feel like traditional office work and are easy to point to... reading docs, talking with teammates, formal research, etc. Inputs might also include a walk in the park, an interesting dream you had the night before, a good song you listened to on the radio during your commute, a painting from the 1800's or all sorts of other cultural / emotional input.

In summary, I've never been more confident in the role of design and impact design can have. I wish designers felt the same confidence. This is the moment to be more bold, to take more creative risk, to double down on the power of design. Everyone is on their own journey, and there are lots of fascinating ways to move through life, so if Gal is serious about "quitting design" then I wish him the best in his adventures ahead. But I hope if others follow they do it because there are other things they are so excited about spending time on vs fear of AI.

[Arnie @arnasgold]

Hiring designers who can help me is a really interesting meta exercise in design leadership. Do they have better skills than me? Can they fill my gaps? Can they see the ones I can’t? Are they ahead of me with their tools and workflows?

If the answer is mostly YES then it feels oddly inspiring as I know I’d learn from them too.

[Arnie @arnasgold]

@dom_gag_96 @italianbldrs One day I'll join you from Turin

[Arnie @arnasgold]

@guerriero_se Looks very nice but if we’re really going there then the next thing is corner radius 😁

[Arnie @arnasgold]

Fable 5 in Ultracode auto-orchestrating 5 subagents on GTE web recon, while a second machine runs 2 more on design work in parallel. We're really doing this now.

[Arnie @arnasgold]

@xchylerdrenth Nice. Some easing would work here if you wanted to mimick a sphere - slower on the ends and faster in the middle

[Arnie @arnasgold]

Hiring across research, engineering and more, to solve the problem of taste and AI slop in design. Way to go lol

[Thais Castello Branco @thaiscbranco_]

We’re excited to introduce Taste Labs.

Our mission is to end AI slop. We’re building the data and infrastructure layer to give AI models and agents taste.

And today we’re coming out of stealth, announcing our $18.5M seed funding, co-led by @CRV and @AmplifyPartners

AI has nailed objective domains and made it easy to generate anything. But it still feels off. Now, the challenge is judgement. What fits, what feels like you, what’s GREAT. This requires turning a fuzzy, subjective domain into something we can measure and codify. We’re starting with design.

There are two sides to cracking this, the foundation model layer and the agent layer:

- We’ve already been working with the top frontier labs to evaluate and improve their models, crafting the right post-training data and RL environments.
- We’ve also been working with app-layer companies to build the context and verification tools for their agents to produce better, more on-brand, more creative outputs.

We want a future where AI feels right.

If you’re passionate about this mission, join us!

[Arnie @arnasgold]

@rozzabuilds Vilnius in summer

[Arnie @arnasgold]

@DanHollick @colderoshay Nice

[Arnie @arnasgold]

Building a custom WebGPU chart renderer to replace TradingView. First experiment: candle-aware drawing tools. The strokes pick up light from nearby candles like glass — closer = brighter, further = invisible. Two-pass masked bloom under the hood

[@jackbutcher @jackbutcher]

Make the Luce 30% wider and everyone would love it

[Arnie @arnasgold]

I think Porsche did a pretty good job. The Taycan still unmistakably looks like a Porsche — you can see the Panamera and 911 DNA in it. It's just not trying so hard to prove that it's an EV

[Arnie @arnasgold]

IMO all black looks much better than the dual black+[colour of your choice]. But it is a bit like slapping a strong filter on a photo that is a bit meh.

[Arnie @arnasgold]

Tesla, Polestar, Rivian etc as EV-native brands converging on a design direction is one thing, but the rest of the classic brands trying to fit in is just throwing away the heritage and DNA. Why not take that as the actual design challenge? Keep the DNA and fit in the new tech