Hi,

Hope you're doing well — it's been a good few weeks over here, busy in the best way.

I walked away from a contract recently. Good client, interesting work — but it wasn't the right fit. That kind of decision has been on my mind while writing this.

Because I've noticed something in the design community I want to talk about.

Everyone's sharing their "taste libraries" now. Screenshots, interfaces they admire, UI details worth remembering. I get it — I've done versions of this myself. But I think we've started confusing collecting taste with actually having it.

There's a real difference between recognizing something is good and understanding why it's good. And an even bigger gap between that and knowing what to leave out.

Steve Jobs put it well: focus isn't saying yes to the important thing. It's saying no to the thousand other good ideas. A screenshot folder is a yes list. Real taste is mostly no's.

Alfred Lin recently wrote something that frames this well — his point: the constraint in software was always execution — until AI dissolved it. Now the bottleneck is judgment. Should we build this, not can we.

Volume isn't judgment. Knowing what not to build is.

​Read the full post →​

More soon,
Anton

Five things

1. ​The design process is dead. Here's what's replacing it. — Jenny Wen, head of design at Claude, on Lenny's podcast. Why the traditional design process is dead and how engineers are forcing the role to evolve. Worth the listen.
2. ​AI Adoption vs. AI Advantage — Alfred Lin's piece that got me thinking about all of this. The companies measuring AI success by tokens consumed and features shipped are already losing.
3. ​Emil Kowalski's skill file — A skill file covering animations, design, code and performance — designed to drop into Claude Code or Cursor.
4. ​Product Design in 2026 FAQ — Tom Scott on how IC interview processes have changed, what companies actually want in portfolios now, and why design leadership hiring looks different. Practical and honest.
5. ​Designing with Claude Code — Steve Schoger walks through his process using Claude Code for design work. If you're curious about where this is all heading practically, this is a good place to start.