📍Building #1: Hello, Builders! in the Age of AI

hey friends from anywhere (っ'-')╮

Lately, walking around the world of AI feels like exploring a giant amusement park — full of people building their own lands. It’s colorful, chaotic, emotional, and buzzing with possibilities. Some experiences feel fresh and mind-blowing. Some are overwhelming. Some just spark joy.

In the past few months, a new theme land has started catching fire: Vibe coding.
At first, I thought: “Wait… I can actually build real prototypes or even full products myself?!”

Exciting! But also a little scary. As a designer, I started wondering: How will our roles evolve? What should I learn next to keep up and thrive? Here are a few thoughts that helped me stop feeling lost and start building.

Y Combinator shared this:
As many designers worry about AI replacing their jobs, the real opportunity is for designers to use AI to build their own products and even companies. The design job of the future might be… founder.

And this tweet from Ryo Lu, Head of Design at Cursor, hit me hard.
Title? Role? Doesn’t matter so much anymore.
What really matters is: “What are you building?”

Instead of jumping into specific tools, I want to talk about something a bit higher-level. Vibe coding space is still early, which makes it the perfect time to experiment — not just with tools, but with different product ideas, workflows, and ways of working that fit your unique skills and goals.

So… what does the vibe coding process even look like? It’s a loop:
From ideas → to prompting → to fast testing → to refining → to building → and back again. This process lets us test and evolve ideas quickly — often with just one or two people. And it’s not just about speed — it’s about flexibility and flow.

Here’s a visual from the State of AI in Design (2025) Report. Highly recommend giving it a read if you haven’t already (shoutout to Marisa for sharing it in her newsletter).

With tools making creation easier, differentiation lies in taste, craft, and storytelling(branding). These are all rooted in design.

1. Product Sense (Judgment, Taste, Instinct)

Everyone’s talking about this — but it can feel abstract.
This visual below from Lenny’s newsletter article “How to develop product sense” helped clarify it for me:

To extend it:

• Empathy → Research, Testing: spotting meaningful needs

• Creativity → Design, Business, Domain Knowledge: crafting solutions that work

AI gives us options. What matters now is being able to choose why — and explain it. And don’t just learn tools. Build the foundation.

📖 Bonus: A Mandarin article summing up product sense in the AI era

2. Crafting Quality

AI helps us move fast — but quality is what helps your product last. Opinionated products stand out. Serving everyone rarely works well. In the AI age, niche wins. Karri Saarinen (CEO of Linear) gave a great talk about this at Config: read here

3. Memorable, Consistent Brand Identity

Strong brands earn trust by telling stories—not just shipping features. Trust is shaped by how the product looks, feels, talks — from values to customer support.

⋆⑅˚₊♡ Things that kept me inspired lately

• On building - Youtube channels: @ycombinator, How I AI Podcast

• On next-gen design paradigm: Shape of AI

• Vibe Coding tools I’m playing with: Claude, V0, Lovable, Replit, Cursor, Play (create with Play)

So…what to build?

I’d like to share with you this quote from Naval:

After leaving this building…

hope you find something inspiring here!

see you in the next building 📍
Amy H. • ༝ •