A hill I’m willing to die on: the IDE is not the future of building software. I basically live in one now, so this isn’t IDE hate. I just think we’re mistaking where AI coding started for where it’s going. As agents get better at writing code, what do you think the actual interface for building software becomes? I have way too many thoughts about this, so naturally I wrote a way too long article about it. crisdobbins.substack.com/p/t…

Product and UX designers: how much of your existing design process are you bringing directly into your AI workflows? I've started giving agents the same artifacts I've used with teams for years: user journeys, system diagrams, wireframes, states, edge cases, jobs to be done. They're incredibly effective AI context. In some cases, a visual journey has communicated the system better than pages of prompting. It made me realize how closely design first principles map to good AI planning and prompting. What design practices have you found translate surprisingly well to working with AI?

I genuinely don't know what my job is anymore. I've been a product designer for 20 years, but now I'm writing code, building agents, designing systems, working on infrastructure, and still doing all the things I'd consider design. None of these titles quite fit anymore. Designers working this way: what are you calling yourself? And what parts of your job have you moved into that you never would have considered “design” a few years ago?

Hottest thing coming out of @soffi_dev right now is before and after images of UI changes on every PR. @donkeyscience from our team has been building Soffi Vision for visual diffs of UI changes that can be viewed in the Soffi UI next to code changes, as well as commented on PRs with summaries of what changed.

I have spent my career fighting for a place at the table, trying to prove that design is important. Even though the numbers show that design-led companies make more money. Now, with AI, I can build all my own ideas; I have never felt more empowered and excited about design, even after 20 years. However, I still needed to learn how to be an engineer. So that is really the irony, isn't it? But in my opinion, it is not at all about coding. It's about ideas, taste, and human understanding. The issue now is only the limited toolset. This is why I am currently obsessed with building tools for designers and not forcing them into IDEs, because that is the way it's always been. We ARE the future.

My product team showed me this tiny little feature this morning, and it sparked so much joy. Ask Soffi “what colors are on this page?” and she shows you the actual design tokens inline. Click one, and it takes you right to it in the design system. We think a lot about how chat and the rest of the product should feel completely integrated, not like two separate experiences. It’s such a small thing, but these little details add up.

I don't think "everyone is a builder now." I think anyone can build if the engineering harness is good enough. Context. Architecture. Deterministic guardrails. Review workflows. Knowledge retrieval. Learning loops. I wrote about the framework we've been using internally at Soffi: The Harness Learning Loop. Link below.

I spent the last seven days redesigning our app, and here's why.

I gave @soffi_dev a glow up! Workspace covers now come from your live app, not a static screenshot that's stale by tomorrow. Capture a frame from the running product, then recapture it whenever the product changes. I built this feature with Soffi and was able to one-shot the UI

I want less files and more interactive interfaces. This is a visualization of a relational knowledge graph we use for design system code generation at @soffi_dev. I love turning something that's normally hidden into something you can explore.

For most of software history, the people shaping products were the people writing code. That also shaped who had the opportunity to build. For #InternationalWomensDay, I wrote about how AI is expanding who gets to build and why #diversity matters in tech. crisdobbins.substack.com/cp/…

💫 This is a moment of massive change. AI accelerates execution, the definition of “product builder” is shifting. Not a PM. Not a designer. Not an engineer. Something emerging in the overlap of all three. crisdobbins.substack.com/cp/…