Creating AI Workflows for Designers

0:07Welcome back to [music] Pragmatic AI where we talk about using AI in the real world. What works, how to use it well, and when it causes more harm than good. Practical tools and real trade-offs for builders and business leaders. My guest today, I keep saying this, my guest today is my old friend because I have so many friends who I've developed on the internet. I'm like, I have known this person for decades. We We used to work together. We've been friends together ages. Steve Schoger, uh

0:29designer and partner at Tailwind Labs. And if that is familiar, it's because we had Adam, who is his co-founder at Tailwind Labs, on in an earlier episode. But Steve is the design mind. So Steve, you know, before I ask you about some questions, can you just kind of say hi and tell people like, what do you do on

0:43a day-to-day? Yeah, so like you said, I'm the sort of the design face of Tailwind Labs. Um and I'm sort of the face of everything we put out. So that includes like Refactoring UI, uh Tailwind CSS, Tailwind UI, and more recently UI.sh. Mhm. And um I I just sort of do everything to do

1:11with like visual design at the company. Um I don't wear much of the developer hat anymore. Um [snorts] I I I don't want to say I'm more of like an artist than I am a designer in a lot of ways. I'm just focusing purely on visual design at the company. So um but I think design is more of a a collaborative role at Tailwind Labs. Like everyone's kind

1:33of wearing the designer hat. So Yeah. Well, and I mean, for those who don't know the history of Tailwind Labs, uh Tailwind is most known for creating a CSS framework called Tailwind that is for developers to do designy things. Um but secondary after that is, you know, a series of educational resources that have taught designer or developers how to think like designers. And I think a lot of that originally came out of the partnership with you and Adam where kind of Adam was a very developer-minded and you were very designer-minded, but you were a designer who understands development and he's a development developer who had an aesthetic

2:05sensibility. So, I've always kind of told the story in my head that like the fact that you are a designer who gets development he's a developer who gets designer and not just the two of you but also everybody else in the team, that's one of the things that's really kind of special sauce. Am I making that up or it do you does that feel what it feel like inside the company? I think that sounds pretty accurate. That sounds true. I think the the birth of the company was like refactoring the company used to be

2:27called refactoring UI Inc. Yeah. Uh because that was our only thing and then we were we weren't sure we were going to do anything else with that. We weren't sure if like Tailwind CSS was going to be monetized at all at that point. Uh and uh but then it just obviously made sense to change the company to Tailwind Labs, but

2:46yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, you are a designer at your core. You're a designer who understands development and you know the kind of on the Pragmatic AI podcast I'm trying to bring people in from different segments of the industry to talk about like what their specific personal but also their industry's relationship with AI looks like and especially in the programming world, uh we tend to first of all we see design as as an art and it is a terrifying kind of thing. Uh if we I have any understanding of how design and AI overlap, it's the fact that we say, "Oh, I now can have uh you know, AI generate the designs on my

3:21apps instead of having to have a human do it." Uh but most people who are a little bit aware they're like, "Oh, they all kind of look the same." Right? Like the AI generates the same and those who really know know that a lot of those looks come from Tailwind's actually you know, like the the colors that Tailwind makes default. Right? Like you guys have had an influence in that generic stuff that's all being generated. It feels that way. It does. Well, I mean I know you don't want to say that. I'd say a lot of the the AI-generated stuff, it looks like V1 of

3:49of uh Tailwind UI. It feels that way. So, Yeah. and even if it's not Tailwind UI, it's certainly using Tailwind, but the CSS it's using is is Tailwind, and the color palettes are using of Tailwind. So, your kind of like fingers are accidentally, unintentionally through, you know, a huge huge section of this world. And I could imagine looking at something like that and saying, "Oh, this is a bummer, right? Like, I'm a designer, and I my work is being supplanted, and I want people to stick with, you know, humans here." Uh but just recently you kind of came out of out of nowhere and just said, "Hey, you

4:20know what? I'm a designer, and I've actually been working with Claude every single day." And you made a a Twitter a video on X um talking about kind of like what your process is like. For someone who hasn't seen it, can you kind of share with us like what is your process like of working with AI as a designer? Yeah, sure. So, I started using Claude in

4:41I think like near the end of January. I think I was kind of I putting it off a little bit. I was just kind of being caught in my ways. I'm like, I'm like I was I was still using Figma. And I didn't want to deviate from that. And I don't know why I just did the one day. Like, Adam was trying to convince me to get in on it like cuz he was using Claude for code, and um but he just set me up with an environment. Like, I I talk about this in the video. Like, I the terminal is very new to me. Um like,

5:12I know how to change directories now, and I know how to navigate around it a little bit, but it still feels very foreign to me, and I I do have to give those guys a call on Tuple quite a bit saying, "Uh like, I'm somewhere where I don't know where I am. Can you tell me navigate this?" And Uh but he set me up with this like this Veet project and install all the dependencies. He like, he walked me in through all that stuff, and then um and then I just started prompting. And I'm like, "This is like I was just talking to it like it was a human." And

5:42saying, like, it's like I was I'm standing behind a developer telling it to nudge pixels this way or that way, except he's not getting annoyed with me. And [laughter] And dude, it was it was like a drug trip that day. Like the first time I ever did that, I'm like, "Wow, this is wild how it's how quick I can work right now. And um And I mean, if you watch the video, it that's that's just my work. So, it's I I'm just it I always get it to I always like get it to generate a sort of a a base sort of layout. I mean, a lot of the stuff I'm doing right now,

6:29it's like they're just they're not real projects. They're fake UI. So, what I The first thing I did is I'll get like chat GPT to make me like an initial prompt like I'll just describe I need an app for and I'll just make up a thing for this type of product. And I can use generate a prompt. And then I'll

6:49plop that into Claude. And and it'll give me my first draft. And then I'll just go and I'll just use it like I use Figma. I'll just like move But the the thing I find so efficient is like it generates all the placeholder content and stuff. Like if I was were to make something like that in Figma, it's like I just getting the the base design in without tinkering with the the the cosmetic stuff would take a long period of time. Like just making a a table and uh I'm not sure if you use Figma a lot, but like Not a lot. I'm familiar with it, though. Yeah. But if like you're

7:27like if you want to make a table and you want to like inject auto layout into it and like that's just it's kind of a headache. And with with Claude, I can just yeah, say make a table. And then now I can start tinkering and say, "Hey, like make the the padding between rows a bit wider or you know, I'll just kind of Goldilocks it a bit." So, make it a bit bigger, make it a bit

7:48smaller. Okay, you know. And um I just work at it bit by bit until I'm happy with it. But then as I'm working too, it's like it's it's learning from all the changes it makes. So, if I'm working on a a marketing page Yeah. and I work for I usually work from like top down. So, I'll start with the navbar and then I'll make the hero and then I'll do like a feature section and that feature section will have the way the it's titled there. Yeah. The way that like the the title section worked. And then it'll just it'll just kind of learn from that as it

8:18goes. So, as I'm making new changes, it'll just refer to what I did. So, it gets to a point it gets easier and easier as I am building out a page Yeah. I found. Um that's this is fascinating to me because in the programming community one of the kind of conversations we're having is do you feel like the thing you loved doing is no longer yours to do because AI is doing it for you? And for a lot of folks that, you know, what they're missing is

8:41typing syntax, right? Typing code in. And I'm already seeing a difference here where you're like, "What I loved doing was not setting up auto layout in Figma and putting placeholder content in Figma, right?" You What you loved doing was and still love is creating the idea of what the design looks like, not clicking buttons to to actually represent that design on the page, right? So, you're still getting to envision and communicate a design. It's just you have a different set of tools that has some conveniences. So, you're doing less manual crap and doing more Is that my hearing that right? Yes, I feel like it's only made things more

9:14efficient for me. Like I I it does all the things I don't want to do. Yeah. I I remember like when we were like hiring designers, like I I just love getting my hands I like doing the work. Yeah. Um I don't want someone to like I don't want to hire another designer to to do stuff I love. Yeah. I want to hire another designer to like just do all the stuff I don't like doing. Yeah. And I remember like thinking, "Oh, it'd be cool if we can hire a designer uh that could just make my basically what Claude is doing for me now, just make my base file so I can

9:45build with it. Yeah. And but it's like, "Ah, I'd feel bad to hire that for that person cuz they'd just be doing grunt work and that's not fun for them." And uh but yeah, now Claude just does that for me and um I Is there any part of you that's like um feeling like you're missing out on part of the creative thing because Claude is giving you something to start with? Are you ever like, "You know what? Like I might have done that differently, but now because it's already there, I'm just going to assume that the way Claude's doing is okay." Or is that not a

10:11problem? No, no. Like if anything, it's like it's very mentally freeing cuz I'm not spending so much time thinking about those little like details on how it's built. Yeah. so I'm like I feel like I'm more mentally free to think about more of the product design. So it's like I'll just be like, "Yeah, you know what? I don't like the I don't actually don't like the way it did this. Um I'm going to

10:33I'll come up with a new idea for this." And I've just feel like, "Oh, I can be creative here." And And everything it's it's building code. So it's actually everything's going to be functional. It's like you know, if I was doing it in Figma, I'd have to like prototype it and draw like create like many artboards to

10:46explain the the thinking of it and Yeah. Um yeah. It's Are there limitations cuz one of the things I'm imagining, like for example, I tried to make a a podcast art for a podcast. Actually for this podcast, when I was in first making it, I was like, "I'm going to try and do all the things I would normally do by hand in a podcast, as many of them as possible, by AI to just see what the experience is like on my AI podcast." And I remember one of the tools I used actually created images. I think like Gemini could create an image and Claude could create an

11:12image. No, maybe not Claude, ChatGPT. And then another tool, probably Claude, all it could do was create JavaScript. So like it used JavaScript to lay stuff out in a box to try and look like something, but because of the fact that it was in code, it was limited in its its creativity, and it gave me much more boring ones. Do you feel Do you have Do you Do you any limitations in your ability to be as creative when you're working in code? Like you're not going to be like, "Hey, do this thing." And you know that thing is only possible if you spend some time in Figma, Photoshop,

11:39or Illustrator. Uh is it constraining you more to work with the things that are easy to do in HTML, or is that not a problem you're feeling? I haven't run into that yet. And so I will say like I still do pop into Figma Uh-huh. uh to if I need to work with like icons and stuff like vector graphics, I need to pop into Figma and and make stuff like that. Yeah. Um and I'd say like rich graphics and stuff I'll need to I haven't done a lot of

12:12that yet. Like I'm it's still so new. Like I'm I'm just trying to like uh get I'm trying to see what I can do with just the base tooling. You know what I mean? I I I haven't spent a lot of time making like really rich graphic Fickle. interfaces yet with like fancy illustrations and stuff. Um but so I I pop into Figma to do that kind of stuff. Um I sometimes open up Paper cuz Paper I've been not sure if

12:42you Are you familiar with Paper? used it. I'm familiar with it, but I haven't used it yet, so. Yeah, they like they do like shaders. Um Okay. Those are like those fancy like elaborate sort of graphics that like if you go to like the Stripe homepage that that big animated thing at the top is

12:56like a a shader. Okay. Um So Paper does that. So so I'll go to Paper, make a shader, and then just copy the code for that, bring it into Claude, and use Yeah. And I Yeah, I know Paper does is I need to spend some time in that, too. Just like I know they have they kind of have like a

13:14it kind of uses Claude. Yeah. Yeah, and just to be clear, you're not here to be the person who knows about everything that's ever happened in AI in the design world. I just want to talk to you about you because I think a lot of people come to the podcast and they're like, well, I have to represent the entirety of the world of right writers or I'm like, no, man, I just want to I just want to know what your life is

13:34like. Dude, like I like I feel like for a long time I was just like I was behind. Like all these new tools coming out. I'm like, I don't want to. Like I'm just I'm I'm 40 now. I don't have the energy to like learn this new thing. Oh, it's familiar. And uh so I was always behind, but this time I feel like, oh, I'm actually I feel like I'm like an earlier adopter on this thing. I remember I was like when like I used to use Photoshop way back in the day and I was like one of the I feel like I was one of the early adopters for

14:05Sketch, right? And I was telling everyone about Sketch and you and everyone was getting on it and I was just hungry, eager and trying new tools and stuff and that is just It's just different, right? Well, I mean, we were talking before the podcast about the fact that, you know, like you're like, look, I've got young kids. One of them didn't sleep very well for a while. I was, you know, exhausted. And a part of what I want to ask is like, I'm finding that as people age, they get, you know, not finding, I've read studies and it's followed with my real life that as people age, they get less likely to want

14:34to try new things. You're happy in the way that things working and your brain just kind of like gets less less flexible. I think plasticity is one of the phrases they use. Yeah. So, yeah, you said you're 40. You are a successful business owner of a business that is going to pay for, you know, you guys are good, right? And you're making a huge shift here and we haven't even talked about your new product that you guys are working on. Have you been anxious? Have you been fearful at any point? Have you been nervous? Are you just like, no,

15:00this is just fun. Uh I'm just having fun right now. Am I nervous? Like Like what in what regard? Like it as like AI is going to My job's going to get replaced or I'm going to make a bet on this and I'm going to do it wrong or you know, just like do you feel freedom in discovering this stuff or are you I feel freedom now, but yeah, it's also cuz we're like we like I feel set up kind of set up comfortably right now Uh cuz the success of Tailwind Labs. Uh Yeah. I do think about stuff like I do think about the stuff like kids a little bit. It's like

15:31my kids' jobs probably aren't invented yet. Yeah. And I I do think about like what is the world going to look like for them? Yeah. Cuz everything's moving so quickly right now and it does feel very overwhelming. Yeah. Um But I don't think about it. I feel very free right now to just explore and have fun with this stuff. I love that. I will say I still want to like I'm still hungry to like like like where like as you know we're working on ui.sh. It's I I there's a lot of curiosity there and there's a lot to we're still learning about the best way to make this product too

16:07and we're Yeah. So, yeah. Well, I mean that's a perfect transition. I would love to talk about it. So, you guys just recently I mean it's not even live to the whole internet, but you're starting to trickle out invites to something called ui.sh which has some of these kind of conveniences and niceties for doing design-related stuff on the internet

16:25when you're using tools like Claude. Could you kind of give us a pitch for what it is and what has your role been in creating it? Yeah. So, So, ui.sh it's a toolkit for your coding agent. So, if you're using Claude, um we find a lot of people who have kind of adopted or using Codex or Cursor whatever whatever your agent is. Um if you're using one of these agents and you install ui.sh, I can I can comfortably say that the designs will look better, the code will be more accessible, and be implemented more correctly and

16:59predictably. Um That's a big promise, so I'll take it. Yeah, I the Our goal right now is to output something that looks like it wasn't obviously generated by AI. Okay. Um and what I mean by that is like it won't default to indigo as a primary color. It's a good start. The grays won't be

17:19overly saturated with a hint of blue. Um, it'll have more thoughtful considerations for typography and color. Um, it will provide more unique layout ideas and and just fix a lot of mistakes that we see on the implementation side. Got it. Um, it's not yet. It's not like a one-shot design, like a linear stripe quality

17:45website. Uh, Yeah. it won't get that all right on the first try. It's not that I cautiously cautiously say yet, like, you know, we're learning so much and Yeah. um, right now stylistically we we have a very narrow focus to make everything just feel clean and modern. Okay. Uh, but we do want to expand on that and provide a variety of different design styles. Uh, you could almost say that UI. sh is like

18:10the second edition of Refactoring UI. It's Interesting. I'd say Yeah. Um, but we we just want to continue making improvements in the in the cool quality and design right now. Um, we also just want to understand how people are using it. So, like you said, we're we're slowly bringing people in. Um, I think we're bringing about 2,500 people a day in right now. Okay. Um, I think there's like over 20,000 people signed up on the mailing list. So, it'll take a few weeks for all that. And and then just new people are just signing up every day cuz it's now that like more people are coming in,

18:46more people are talking about it on on Twitter and uh, kind of and but the the feedback has been pretty positive so far. My bad. So, Okay, so you said it's like Refactoring UI. So, for those not familiar, Refactoring UI was basically saying, uh, "Hey developers who don't understand design, it's not just this magical mystical thing. There's actually kind of like systems and rules and practices you can follow that will make the quality of output better design-wise. And it was knowing the limitations and the mindsets of developers, how do we bring design mentality and methodology to them? So, what you're saying is it's the same thing except for instead of the word

19:25developers, it's agents, right? Like you know what the common practices of agents doing design are, you know what the common shortcomings are, you know what mistakes they make, you know what makes something look like a slop-coded AI design, and you're trying to build correctors for those specific things using your designer's eye on them.

19:42Yeah. Okay. Um so, it's tools that plug into all of your um your things. Would you Would you recommend them for uh developers, and would you recommend them for designers, and would you recommend them for anybody else? Like who's it targeted towards? [snorts] I'd say like I mean, we're trying to build the tool

20:03we want to use ourselves. Yeah. You know what I mean? And um it's So, in that regard, it's yeah, it's for I'd say it helps me to just kind of it helps me with that just correct all the immediate things that I was going to correct anyway. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yep. And I I'd say it's a better starting point for developers who just

20:26don't have a design eye. It's Yeah. Yeah. Uh but like I'm just a very I'm the kind of guy that likes to customize every single new project. Like I But it's like I So, I like using it as a starting point. Okay. And yeah. So, as you think about being on a team, cuz a lot of these conversations around how people use Claude or imagining it's a one-person shop, but the vast majority of them aren't, right? So, imagine you're working on a team of developers, you're the one designer on the project, and all the developers have Claude and

20:59UI.sh. Where do you want to slot in there? Should they do any front-end code at all, or should they just leave that entirely up to you and Claude and UI.sh? Like is it is it better for you to get the blank page or is it better for them to do the best work they can do as developers with UI.sh and then pass it over to you afterwards? Yeah, okay. I Yeah, it's funny you asked that cuz like yeah, I I feel like I'm now a developer at

21:27my company now. Yeah. Yeah, okay. And that feels uh Now, I've I've certainly haven't replaced any developer job at my company. Like they're all But um I'm just like another developer hat. Like it's I I can I'd say like I The example I can use at our company like when we were doing Tailwind UI and creating uh components for Tailwind UI like it was always the process was always I was in

21:57Figma and I was designing the component. I was designing all the breakpoints and then I was handing that off to uh Jonathan or whoever was going to build it. Yeah. And and and I don't think there's always something to do at our company so it was never a bottleneck but I'd hand something off but it still wouldn't be built for a long time after that. Now I can just like work in Claude and I like

22:23I can essentially build it now. The code quality still needs to be in check, right? That's for UI.sh. And then what and hopefully we can refine it to a point where it's um it's going to get the code is going to be just as good as if like just Adam wrote the code himself. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um Yeah, so I can speak to like about like maybe what my role might be on a UI.sh like when you inject UI.sh into your project uh like but in a lot of ways and hopefully in the I I don't know the developers role so much cuz I'm just not

23:02the developer, you know what I mean? Sure. Yeah. Well, one of the thing interesting about that is I I don't know if you kind of saw it, but Justin Jackson, our shared our mutual friend, was talking recently about how it's sort of like a lot of companies you've got the the Spider-Man meme and each of the spiders you've got the product developer, you've got the designer, and you've got the programmer all being like wanting to take each other's roles cuz they're like, "Oh, as a developer with AI, I can do product leadership and I can do, you know, design." And as a

23:29designer, I can do this this the other. And he said, "Are you seeing this problem and is this a problem?" And I I personally, just because of the way Titan's shaped, we're not seeing it, but I definitely can imagine, you know, folks where there's much more of like a defined team like you're seeing it. But it sounds like to you you're like, "Yeah, like I can do things and maybe they can do things they couldn't before and the end result is we're making more." You said there's no less there's no developer jobs as result of this,

23:52right? Yeah, I'd say like you know, I'll do the first pass of the design, but I can now hand it off to a developer, but now with all the information that's been provided by me, they can now work on the design. Yeah. And they're not just working from scratch, right? They're work So, they can now feel like a designer, but they're just working on like that cuz it's I find that um LLMs are really good at like if you have a good starting point, it can make pretty good decisions. Mm,

24:24okay. That's helpful. Um that kind of definitely takes me down the road of just like continuing this conversation around are we afraid? Um we mentioned the fact that you're like, "I look, I'm not afraid right now for my career." But you also mentioned you're not afraid about people at Tailwind losing their jobs as result of AI. Now, again, one of the things that Adam and I talked about is AI's impact on Tailwind as an education company, you know, how that. But that was that was AI's changing the need for the final product, not AI's changing the need for the developers working at the company. So, from a place where if we're not worried

24:58about us having jobs, I feel like the two end results there are combination of we more and we maybe have more peaceful lives. And again, we talked a little bit about how you and I both have had, you know, kids who don't sleep through the night and how there's times phases in your life where you're not able to, you know, just kind of be as actively involved in the world as you want. Have you found that using AI makes more time or takes away more time from whether the parts of your job that you enjoy or your personal life. Is it having much of an impact on, you know,

25:27on those things? Uh it's a bit of all of those things right now. I'll I'll explain. Like it's so powerful like that I feel like I could do it's certainly not taking anything away from me. Um it's it is like freeing me up. But there's still like I feel like cuz it's so new, there's so much I want to do and so much I want to explore. Yeah. That um I I like I I'm really enjoying sitting at my desk right now. You know what I

25:57mean? But I love that. Yeah. Um D- Do you when I first started using it, it's like like I said, I think uh it was like near the end of January and I and I got Claude installed and it was I was doing stuff on I spent like a day on it. It was like a Friday that this happened. And then the weekend came up. But the next week I was going on a family vacation. And I was just on this high of like, "Oh, Right. obviously I'm like [laughter] I want to enjoy my family and but gosh, this is uh Yep. This is really

26:29exciting here. Yeah. Yeah. I need to get back to it. Um So familiar. But uh and then that first month, dude, I I'd say the first uh [snorts] So, like side note, like I recently got like assessed for ADHD and if you know me like sure Welcome. Yeah. I I Yeah, that's why I got formally diagnosed with ADHD. So they prescribed me a Concerta and like yeah, Concerta combined with this this Claude code. You just like I was just turning out I was locked in. I'm like how can I get more like I I I I don't even know how this relates

27:10back to the original question you asked. Like it's like keep going. Yeah, I just feel like I it's freeing in a lot of ways. Like okay, I I feel it almost brought like peace of mind. It's like okay, I can I can I can I can do so much more than I could before and I can work way faster and as a company I think we can really

27:28plow ahead right now. Um but and I guess mentally it was very freeing and so you know in a lot of ways I I didn't take work into the evening. I wasn't like like I felt like less stressed in some ways for a minute there. I love that. Um but also I was just

27:46really excited so I was just locked in. Well, a lot of people when they get really excited and really locked in they really have that problem you're talking about where you're like I should be with my family or I should be at this party and I'm going to go worry about burning tokens. I haven't heard you talk much

27:58about the anxiety of wasting tokens. It's more just the excitement of trying something new. Do you have any of that like if I'm not if I don't have an agent running I'm wasting my time kind of energy? Oh, no. I don't keep things running in the background. I I guess it was just like you know, for many years at the company I felt like we always had an idea of what we were like going to work on next, right? And I felt like it was getting to a point where it's like I don't know if we have any like ideas left. Like we felt like we were getting

28:26to the end of the line of ideas or if we did have an idea it was super ambitious. And it's like like again, this age thing is creeping up on me. It's like I don't have the energy to do that thing that's super ambitious. And as soon as I started diving into Claude and all this stuff, I feel like okay, that's I felt like a lot of pressure was taken off there. It's like "Okay, there's something here. Like, this is really

28:48exciting. Let's go you know." Yeah. And so, I hear you say like there's something here in terms of this this product way, your question, I don't you're like running through the tokens and stuff. Uh-huh. Um like I got to apply to new product. I don't even know what plan I'm on. Um Like, I'm just beautiful. I'm burning token. I don't Yeah, I Just not worried

29:06about it. Yeah. Um the there's the Oh, so you mentioned how um there's something here. Like, you're excited because there's something in the world of agentic coding that you guys can contribute to the world. Is there a part where some of those dreams that were so big they made you nervous, do they feel

29:26more accessible because of AI? Well, I think for a while we were like excited about this AI world, but we didn't know our role in it. We didn't know like where it's our where does Tailwind fit in this world? Yeah. Um and even when I started using Claude, I didn't know what We didn't know what it

29:49was yet. Yeah. But, we knew there was something. Like, I felt like, "Oh, there's something here that we're like going to think of in the in the coming weeks." Yeah. And that feels exciting. did. Yeah. I hope so. From the beginning of it, right? One of the cool things about ui.sh is it's not a defined and done thing, right? You know, like you can

30:07continue helping us. Yeah, we we made it very clear like when you like people are on the newsletter and then when they get their invite, uh they get a like a long email explaining what ui.sh is right now, what it isn't. Um We're very kind of in this like like we did something different than we normally do. Like, it's that with previous product launches like our our previous product launches like everything was just sort of

30:36had a very done complete version of it. Got it. ui.sh feels a little bit of an early launch and we made that very clear in the initial email. Uh yeah. Yeah, I'm like what I'm seeing like tweets and people are like wondering like people cuz people are talking about it and people are probably like what is it? I don't I

30:54still don't understand what it is. Yeah. And uh I went and like reread the email. I'm like did we make that very clear? I hope we did cuz uh it's like yeah, it's still early um in that regard. So I mean I I asked you at the beginning of the podcast to say what it is, but if somebody if you had 250 characters, so give me your your what is the elevator pitch for what you I did SSH is the

31:14short version. Um I mean it basically the headline that's on the on the website right now. It's a it's what does it say on the website? Let me Let's let's go read it together. it out loud. Turn your terminal into an interface divine designer a toolkit for coding agents like Claude code amp cursor open code and codex to help you build UI's that don't suck. I mean

31:35that's the good elevator pitch. Pretty clear. For the most part, yeah. Yeah, but it's there's a lot to unpack there, right? There's still a lot underneath the hood that it's like you know. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about what AI means when it comes to your career. Uh we haven't talked quite as much about kind of how you look at it more more like philosophically and how it attaches to your personal life. So I'm going to I'm going to give you a two-pronged question. In a second I'm going to ask about what you think like AI means for the whole broad world, but first I just want to ask like what is

32:04your interaction with AI outside of work? Are you using chat GPT for stuff for your kids? Are you you know, planning family vacations? Are you sort of like when I step away from the work desk AI is not involved in my life? Oh no, I use it every day. Uh chat GPT, yeah, definitely. Um Yeah, like I I wouldn't you know, sometimes I'm like talking to chat GPT and it's like you know, it's not like a therapist, but like you're asking questions it gives you like some reassurance like oh this is therapy, you

32:31know what I mean? Yeah. Uh huh. [laughter] Yep. Uh but I it's replaced Google for me in a lot of ways. Yeah. You know. Yeah. basically use like um chat GPT or it's like a Google search with like Reddit at the end of my [laughter] search. That's the Those are my Yeah. So cuz if I need like a product recommendation or something, I'll type in the product name and I'll type

32:53Reddit. Toss a person, yeah, 100%. Yeah, cuz I like I just find you get like there's more conversation, there's more dialogue there. Um But like yeah, I've had like I use chat GPT every day. I I use it mostly on like for like I I ask it a lot of health questions, like stuff we were talking about earlier before we started recording, but like you know my whole YouTube algorithm is all like wellness sort of there's a lot of that stuff in my I'd say a lot of my conversation history in chat GPT is is regarding like you know, I have a lot of meal plans in there. It's like I need a

33:27meal, you know uh or I want to have like I want to create a lunch that has like X amount of fiber in it and X amount of protein in it and can you create like a little thing for me? Uh that's how I use it mostly personally. And there's other kinds of other kind I mean I'm not going to bring

33:41up my conversation history. I brought mine up and I'm looking over it and I'm like, yeah, it's it's a mixture of like little useful tasks, stuff for the kids like where how do I find full-size soccer goals in Atlanta? And then there's a whole bunch of health stuff, you know, like I was trying to remember what it is, but there's a specific thing I'm like I'm trying to make sure that I have I'm living a life that generates less of this very negative chemical. You know, what are the scientifically proven, you know, things that cause that to happen? How do I make sure I minimize those in my life

34:08kind of thing? So Dude, I made a here's a good one. I made a cuz Easter happened and you know, cuz I'm not sure if you watch Bluey. I don't know how old your kids are. Yeah, so there's an episode of Bluey where they do the Easter egg hunt and they have to like solve the riddles or whatever. Okay. My kids are 9 and 13, so I saw like the first couple seasons and now

34:27I'm totally out of it. an Easter episode where like they wake up in the morning and they have to go on the Easter hunt and then at the end is like their big like Easter surprise. Yeah. And so I ever since that I've been doing that every year for my kids and I try to make it rhyme like everything's like a riddle and I try to make it harder every year cuz they're a bit older and they're just like they can figure out the clues and I make it rhyme and everything and I had ChatGPT come up with my whole like scavenger hunt that I did the other day with the kids. It was

34:55Yeah. So I mean you you seem pretty positive on it and I know that you know you don't want to be the person who comes out and says this is the future of the world because of AI. But do you generally do you live with any form of feeling like you know what the future of the world is because of AI or are you kind of just like look I'm going to take each things I go like do you are you like the future's better or worse because of AI or you're just sort of

35:20like I don't know what's going on? I'm just taking it day by day man. I yeah it's some days I get No I don't know. I'm just taking it day by day. I don't think we're too hard. Yeah. Got it. I wish I had more predictions on that stuff but it's it's just Everybody's got a prediction man. Dude it's wild man. It's it's wild when you look at it like 5 years ago like when did ChatGPT launch? You got to ask ChatGPT that don't you? I I have 2022 in my uh yep

35:45November 20th November 30th 2022. Around there Yeah. Yeah. And some sometimes it feels like it came out last year and sometimes it feels like it's been it's been forever so. Dude like when I like again when I started using Claude like it when did like skills weren't really introduced until November when did like

36:04when did Claude code even come out? Let's learn that one. There's some people I know who have all these like perfectly memorized. I'm like I don't understand. Okay February 2025. Yeah okay so I know so like I started using Claude code and uh uh for design and I feel like I'm early on it. I don't know if I'm like an early adopter or not. Mhm. For design yet. In the grand scheme of when I see activity on Twitter with our designers I really love Yeah. But I also feel like I'm very behind. Like what? It's out It was out a

36:37year earlier that I started using it. Like think about how far it had to be right now if I started using it then. Like what I Yeah. things could I unbox? So it That's how quick it's moving. Like you feel I feel ahead but it's also like behind in a lot of ways. I mean when I talk to people so I you know I run a consultancy so I talk to a lot of people who have applications that they're paying money for or want applications built. So they're still kind of top tier people in terms of

37:02using internet technologies. And when I tell you the difference between just the people I talk to in business development concepts versus our like Twitter world I'm like oh no cuz those people are in the top five you know 2% of being on top of things and if you compare their level of confidence and awareness and being on top of the latest versus the people on Twitter people on Twitter are going to make you think that if you are not using this this system that came out yesterday you're going to lose your job and be the permanent underclass. When in reality if you just going to kind of go talk to

37:30your family you know like go talk to your family over Easter. They have no idea what any of this stuff is. So Oh yeah. So ahead of the game. So advanced. It's like when I talk to like my neighbors they'll they'll be like you know they'll be asking about work and like some of them kind of know like of a few developer neighbors they are but some of my neighbors are just like whatever they're just work like they're a teacher or a doctor or something like that. Yeah. Uh they're not

37:57in the tech world at all. And I'll be like talking about my job I'll be like oh yeah like like right now I'm like kind of like teaching AI how to design in a lot of like you know I mean that's like sort of a the simplified version of They're like wow you must be like I'm

38:13like it's way simpler than you think. Yeah. I'm just talking to a human scientist or whatever. Yeah. Yeah I'm not like No that that there's like smart people in in San Francisco doing that stuff. I'm just like literally talking to like a human and hopefully it understands me. Most of the time it doesn't. Yeah. [laughter] Uh I love that. Okay, so we are close to time, so we're going to start wrapping up, but before I do my wrap-up stuff, Steve, is there anything that you think people should be thinking about that they're not, or is there anything else you wanted to make sure you got a chance

38:42to talk about today? Uh I think we've captured all my thoughts. Perfect. Well, you know, one of the last things I do at the end of every podcast is First of all, I want to make sure people can follow you. So, if people are interested in Steve Schoger, they were interested in learning about Tail on Labs, ui.sh, or if they want to think about more about What does it look like for a designer to use AI? Where do they

39:01follow in you and keep up with you? Yeah, I'm I Well, I'm not incredibly active on Twitter anymore like I used to be, but I'm on there. Yeah. Um so, you can find me like my handle's @SteveSchoger, and that's like the handle I use for most of my socials. Uh and then I'm starting to post on YouTube more, and it's same same handle's @SteveSchoger. And we'll put those in the show notes for anybody

39:24interested. Sure. Uh well, then the last thing I do is I asked some people to share some practical tips they use for their day-to-day interaction with AI, and so we've got one here from Drew Richard. He says, "We're going to Iceland in August." Although, I think this must be this past August at this point. "And I'm going to use it to make sure I'm not missing anything. Planning, timing, scheduling, and probably helping with the packing list." Um I don't know about you, but I have you Actually, I do know about you cuz you said you use it instead of Google now. I have found that replacing

39:52something a human did with AI is usually not super likely to be successful unless that person was doing wrote work that they didn't enjoy doing and was boring and was mindless, and they're really happy to have it gone. But, replacing stuff that other computer systems did with AI is really where it shines for me. I'm just sort of like, "Yeah, Google was Google's a pre-AI. It's trying to understand my intent. It's trying to understand the context it's working with. And so replacing one computer system that's doing an okay job of finding surfacing stuff for me with a computer system that's doing a better job of surfacing things for me. I'm

40:27like, great. This this makes sense. Nobody's losing here, right? Or you know, the packing list. I mean, the packing list as someone with ADHD, I don't care where the help is coming from. If you can help me with a packing list, I'm going to take it, you know? So, yeah. That guy going to Iceland, that guy I

40:42went to Iceland. Oh, really? Last year around that time? That guy needs to go on a hike. Who's this person? Drew Richard. I Unfortunately, I don't have I just have their names in the the Trello card. I don't have them. But I can go hunt him down. I got a recommendation that guy needs to go on this hike. It's called uh

41:02I love this. Uh Iceland. I've got to type in Iceland hikes. And then if I want to see the name, I know it. I'm going to get this. It's called Skogafoss. S K O G A F O S S. Dude, that was the it was like walking into a painting. It was the most real thing I've ever seen in my life. Like it's a long hike. It was like a 6-hour thing. Yeah. Um and it was adventurous, too. Like we had to tread through water. It was like a high current. Like there was like one of those situations if you took a a slip, oh that could have been dang bad. But it

41:36um that was a very surreal moment in my life. Just witnessing that. It's you were so high up in the mountain and you're like looking down at a waterfall and you see like bird like seagulls flying around. And it was like it was like being in like one of those like old Disney movies that are like hand illustrated and stuff. And yeah,

42:00dude, wild. Um I have it pulled up here and it doesn't look real. It absolutely looks like something that would be first of all, it'd be in the background of my um my Yeah, oh yeah, it's like a it's like a desktop wallpaper. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's so cool. Well, hopefully when Drew said he's going to Iceland in August, this was this coming August, not next August. Unfortunately, I don't remember when I asked this question. But even if not, if anybody else goes, or Drew, if you go back, you got to check this one out. And we'll put a link to to this particular page that I

42:31pulled up, Skogafoss and the waterfall way hike Iceland in the show notes for anybody who wants to check it out. I'm sold. Uh all right, well, Steve, uh you know I love hanging out with you. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you so much for hanging out today. Yeah, man. Good

42:48catching up again. Truly. What's When did I see you last? Uh It's been Oh, I know it was 2022 or 2023. It's been that long, eh? Because I know you met Imani, and that was Yeah, so it was sometime around then. Yep. Wow, man. It's been too long. We're going to have to do it again. I know, yeah. I don't know You always go to the Laracon conferences, eh? Yeah, yeah, just come to any Laracon. Yeah, I know. What are you doing do Wire Live again, if we It's in Boston

43:17this year, isn't it? It's in Boston in end of July. Yeah, I'm going to Boston in June. We're going to the one of the World Cup games. Okay, got it. Yeah, so I probably won't go again, but I don't know. Another time, man. One of these years. Uh I think we're trying to get Caleb Porzio to do Wire Live in Buffalo again. So, that's

43:36That might be a drive for you, right? We're going to get you to one of those. Yeah, I'll see you there. Uh cool, man. Everybody else, thank you so much for hanging out, [music] and we will see you all next time.

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