B-TIER design
Build Wars recap — AI gets you 80%, designers finish the 20%
100k ft — What is this?
Build Wars recap — AI gets you 80%, designers finish the 20%
50k ft — Why care?
@itsdesignertom's newsletter dissecting the Brotzky $100 / Jhey CSS Build Wars showdown. Core lesson: AI nails the first 80% of a UI but handcrafted tweaks still matter. Published via @uxtoolsco.
10k ft — Key takeaways
• Treat vibe-coded UI as 80% scaffolding, always hand-tune last 20%
5k ft — Tools & techniques
Claude, Cursor, Gemini, Vercel
(no techniques tagged)
1k ft — Deep-dive / try it
Can you prompt this design into existence?
From Brotzky’s $100 challenge to Jhey’s handcrafted CSS, we’re seeing that sweet spot where AI gets you 80% there but designer touch for that final 20% is necessary.
I find myself mastering and manually tweaking code to dial in my AI-generated software.
Just dropped my newsletter dissecting 7 key lessons designers can take from last week’s Build Wars showdown - grab it @uxtoolsco
The tools are good, but designers are making them better.
skrivenski
45w
Bad tools for humanity
Transcript excerpt
$100, if you can prompt this into existence, said Brotsky. And that's what he got. Brandon McConnell got close with V-Zero, nailed the border gradient actually. Dominic Schultz on the other hand tried it with cursor closer, but Santos did the best and he used V-Zero. So Brotsky up the challenge, prompt this into existence. Gauntlet with a valiant effort using Gemini, but no dice. But Wirecat got closer with only three prompts in Claude. It's pretty good. However, Jay from Vercel demonstrated how a tiny bit of custom CSS can go a long way. Designing interfaces that look handcrafted with AI tools is still hard. That's why I love seeing prompt challenges like this toggle animation from Kabarza or this loading state challenge from Tom Johnson. It's not easy yet, but it's getting better and all thanks to designers who are willing to try like Daniel Sands animated cards from a single prompt in Claude. If there's anything I've learned from last week's build wars, it's that the tools are good, but the designers are going to make them better.