The best AI will ever be (seriously?)
This week at work, the topic of AI skills came up. No, not the "I'm good at ChatGPT" kind of skills, but custom toolkits for coding agents like Claude Code or Codex. Think on-demand micromanagers for UI, design, databases, or anything else, keeping your project laser-focused.
I've collected quite a few along my agentic code journey and was asked to share them. So I put them all together in a GitHub repo for anyone to use. Most of them are design-oriented, but some are more "quality of life" skills that just make the agentic coding experience way better. Feel free to take a look and grab them if you find them useful.
In today's newsletter, I've got 10 articles for you, including:
- A rarely-seen 1996 Steve Jobs interview shows Pixar's gritty triumph.
- How blogs are back with pure RSS feeds. No algorithms needed.
- How AI exposes design's craft crisis and technical literacy gap.
- And more...
Most Interesting
How I'm dealing with the pressure to adopt AI as a designer
How I'm dealing with the pressure to adopt AI as a designer Martin Wright has a simple filter for AI in design work: wait six months before buying into any hype, then try it on stuff that doesn't matter much. If it actually helps the people using what you're building, keep it. If not, drop it. The bigger point is that nobody else gets to decide your tools for you. Judge by what comes out the other end, not what's trending.
Design + Development
The Steve Jobs Archive released a never-before-seen 1996 interview with Jobs about Pixar's early days, timed to Toy Story's 30th anniversary. It covers team growth, A Bug's Life, and renegotiating the Disney deal.
100+ open-source 3D icons made in Blender, free under CC0 for personal and commercial use. Multiple styles, angles, and source files for Figma, Sketch, and XD.
Find your new favorite Google Font by sliding axes like playfulness, elegance, and warmth on interactive pads life "Flavor", "Vibe", and "Fanciness."
Tech + Innovation
Designing for Transparent Screens
David Allin Reese from Google Design covers the challenges of designing for transparent AI glasses displays, introducing Jetpack Compose Glimmer. Topics include redefining black as containers, managing halation with shadows, optimizing typography for legibility, and using desaturated palettes for real-world harmony.
Why AI is exposing design's craft crisis
From weak AI outputs like Figma Sites to dev communication failures, understanding code, APIs, and technical debt is no longer optional.
Two Beliefs About Coding Agents
David Brunig has been talking to developers about coding agents and keeps hearing two things: good programmers feed agents context without realizing they're doing it, and agents work fine for quick personal prototypes but fall apart once you need to ship, test, and maintain a real product.
Work + Mindset
Find and follow independent blogs via RSS. No algorithms, just a chronological feed with search and filters. No account needed, data stays in your browser, with optional cloud sync.
Elliot Bonneville argues that traditional competitive advantages in software are gone, leaving money as the primary moat for startups.
The AI community tends to say "this is the worst this will ever be" in response to criticism, but in a very learned sense, in many aspects it is also the best it will ever be.
