Why AI-Built UIs Still Feel Off

Inspired by Taste Can't Be Prompted by Akash Bhadange.

AI can now build a working UI in a few minutes. You prompt it, it gives you code, the feature runs. That part is solved.

The problem is that "working" and "done" are not the same thing.

A UI can work and still feel off. The spacing is a little tight. The loading spinner flashes for a split second and looks broken. The error message says the right words in the wrong tone. The button works but loses its hover state when it's loading, so it feels dead. None of this shows up in the code review. It shows up when you actually use the thing.

This is the part AI is bad at. Not because the model is weak. Because noticing these things is a human thing. You have to use your own app, get annoyed, and ask why you're annoyed. AI does not get annoyed.

The part that used to get you hired is free now

A year ago, the job of a frontend engineer was mostly: take a design, turn it into working code, wire up the API, ship it. That part can now be done by a tool in a few minutes. Sometimes the first pass is good enough.

So the starting line moved. Writing the code is no longer where the value is. The value is in knowing that the generated UI is not finished yet, and knowing what to fix first.

This sounds small. It is not small. It is most of the work now.

Taste is not a gift

People talk about "taste" like it is a thing you are born with. I don't think that's true.

Taste is what you are left with after you use your own software on a slow internet, get annoyed, and fix what annoyed you. Then do that a hundred more times. After a while you start catching the problems earlier, before you ship, before you even write the code. That's taste. It is just paying attention, for a long time, until paying attention becomes automatic.

AI will not do this for you. It can generate ten versions of a button, but it can't tell you which one feels right, because "feels right" means something to a human and nothing to a model.

Everyone can build. Fewer people can tell when what they built is actually finished. That is the gap, and it is not closing anytime soon.