Pragmatic AI with Matt Stauffer

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.

T-I-G-H-T-E-N.

We will take your AI ideas, prototypes, or even vibe-coded apps,

and we'll take them to production.

Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.

Welcome back to Pragmatic AI, where we talk about using AI in the real world.

What works, how to use it well, and when it causes more harm than good.

Practical tools and real trade-offs for builders and business leaders.

My guest today, I keep saying this, my guest today is my old friend because I have so many
friends who I've developed on the internet and I'm like, I have known this person for

decades.

We used to work together, we've been friends together for ages.

Steve Schoger uh designer and partner at Tailwind Labs.

And if that is familiar, it's because we had Adam

who is his co-founder at Tailwind Labs on an earlier episode, but Steve is the design
mind.

So Steve, before I ask you once a question, can you just kind of say hi and tell people
like, what do you do on a day to day?

Yeah, so like you said, I'm sort of the design face of Tailwind Labs.

um And I'm sort of the face of everything we put out.

So that includes like refactoring UI, Tailwind CSS, Tailwind UI, and more recently UI.SH.

And um I just sort of do everything to do with like visual design at the company.

uh

don't wear much of the developer hat anymore.

I don't want to say I'm more of like an artist than I am a designer in lot of ways.

I'm just focusing purely on visual design at the company.

But I think design is more of a collaborative role at Tailwind Labs.

Like everyone's kind of wearing the designer hat.

Yeah.

Well, and I mean, for those who don't know the history of Tailwind Labs, Tailwind is most
known for creating a CSS framework called Tailwind that is for developers to do designy

things.

But secondary after that is, you know, a series of educational resources that have taught
designer or developers how to think like designers.

And I think a lot of that originally came out of a partnership with you and Adam where
kind of Adam was a very developer minded and you were very designer minded.

But you are a designer who understands development and he's a developer who had an
aesthetic sensibility.

So I've always kind of told the story in my head that like the fact that you are a
designer who gets development, he's a developer gets designer and not just the two of you,

but also everybody else on the team.

That's one of the things that's really kind of special sauce.

Am I making that up or do you, that feel, what does it feel like inside the company?

I think that sounds pretty accurate.

That sounds true.

the birth of the company, the company used to be called Refactoring UI, Inc.

because that was our only thing and we weren't sure we were going do anything else with
that.

We weren't sure if Tailwind CSS was going to be monetized at all at that point.

But then it just obviously made sense to change the company to Tailwind Labs.

yeah.

Yeah, okay.

So you are a designer at your core.

You're a designer who understands development and you know the kind of on the pragmatic AI
podcast I'm trying to bring people in from different segments of the industry to talk

about like what their specific personal but also their industry's relationship with AI
looks like and especially in the programming world uh We tend to first of all, we see a

design as an art and it is as terrifying kind of thing if we have any understanding of how

design and AI overlap.

It's the fact that we say, I now can have uh AI generate the designs on my apps instead of
having to have a human do it.

But most people who are a little bit aware, they're like, they all kind of look the same,
right?

Like the AI generates the same.

And those who really know know that a lot of those looks come from Tailwind's actually,
like the colors that Tailwind makes default, right?

Like you guys have had an influence in that generic stuff that's all being generated.

But what's interesting, it does.

Well, I I know that you don't want to say that, but.

a lot of the the AI generated stuff it looks like V1 of of uh Tailwind UT it feels that
way.

So yeah.

even if it's not Tailwind UI, it's certainly using Tailwind, but the CSS it's using is
Tailwind and the color palettes are using a Tailwind.

So your kind of like fingers are accidentally unintentionally through, you know, the huge,
huge section of this world.

And I could imagine looking at something like that and saying, this is a bummer, right?

Like I'm a designer and my work is being supplanted and I want people to stick with, you
know, humans here.

But just recently you kind of came out of nowhere and just said, hey, you know what?

I'm a designer and I've actually been working with Claude every single day.

And you made a Twitter, a video on X um talking about kind of like what your process is
like.

For someone who hasn't seen it, can you kind of share with us like what is your process
like of working with AI as a designer?

Yeah, sure.

So I started using Claude in, I think near the end of January.

uh I think I was kind of putting it off a little bit.

I was just kind of being caught my ways.

like, I'm like, I was still using Figma and I didn't want to deviate from that.

And I don't know why I just did the one day.

Like Adam was trying to convince me to get in on it.

Like, cause he was using Claude for code and uh

but he just set me up with an environment.

I talk about this in the video.

The terminal's very new to me.

ah I know how to change directories now and I know how to navigate around it a little bit,
but it still feels very foreign to me and I do have to give those guys a call on Tuple

quite a bit saying, ah, I'm somewhere where I don't know where I am, can you help me
navigate this?

ah But he set me up with this vite project and

install the dependencies.

He walked me in through all that stuff and then I just started prompting and I'm like,
this is like, was just talking to it like it was a human and saying, it's like I'm

standing behind a developer telling it to nudge pixels this way or that way, except it's
not getting annoyed with me.

dude, it was like a drug trip that day.

The first time I ever,

I'm like, wow, this is wild how quick I can work right now.

And I mean, if you've watched the video, that's just my workflow.

I always get it to generate a of a bass sort of layout.

I mean, a lot of the stuff I'm doing right now, it's like...

They're just, not real projects.

They're like fake UIs.

So what I, the first thing I did is I'll get like chat GPT to make me like an initial
prompt of like, I'll just describe, I need an app for, and I'll just make up a thing for

this type of product and can use generator prompt.

And then I'll plop that into Claude and it'll give me my first draft.

And then I'll just go and I'll just use it like I use Figma.

I'll just like.

But the thing I find so efficient is like, it generates all the placeholder content and
stuff.

if I were to make something like that in Figma, it's like, just getting the base design in
without tinkering with the cosmetic stuff would take a long period of time.

Like, just making a table and, I'm not sure if you use Figma a lot, like, uh but if like
you're like,

if you want like a table and you want to like inject auto layout into it and like that's
just the, it's kind of a headache.

And with, with Claude, can just, yeah, say make a table.

And then now I can start tinkering to say, Hey, like make the, the padding between rows a
bit wider or, you know, I'll just kind of Goldilocks it a bit.

It's kind of say like, make it a bit bigger, make it a bit smaller.

Okay.

You know, and, um, I just work at it bit by bit until I'm happy with it.

But then as I'm working too, it's like,

It's learning from all the changes it makes.

So if I'm working on a marketing page, eh I usually work from like top down.

So I'll start on the nav bar, then I'll make the hero, and then I'll do like a feature
section.

And that feature section will have the way the, it's titled there, the way like the title
section works.

And then it'll just kind of learn from that as it goes.

So as I make new changes, it'll just refer to what I did.

So it gets to a point, it gets easier and easier as I am building out a page, I found.

That's this is fascinating to me because in the programming community, one of the kind of
conversations we're having is, do you feel like the thing you loved doing is no longer

yours to do because AI is doing it for you?

And for a lot of folks that, you know, what they're missing is typing syntax, right?

Typing code in.

And I'm already seeing a difference here where you're like, what I loved doing was not
setting up auto layout in Figma and putting placeholder content in Figma, right?

What you loved doing was and still love is

Creating the idea what the design looks like not clicking buttons to actually represent
that design of the page, right?

So you're still getting to envision and communicate a design It's just you have a
different set of tools that has some conveniences So you're doing less manual crap in

doing it.

Am I hearing that right?

Huh

things more efficient for me.

it does all the things I don't want to do.

I remember when we were hiring designers, I just love getting my hands, I like doing the
work.

I don't want someone to like, I don't want to hire another designer to do stuff I love.

I want to hire another designer to just do all the stuff I don't like doing.

And I remember thinking, oh, it'd be cool if we could hire a designer that could just...

make my, basically what Claude is doing for me now, just make my base file so I can tinker
with it.

And, but it's like, ah, I'd feel bad to hire that for that person because they would just
be doing grunt work and that's not fun for them.

And, but yeah, now Claude just does that for me.

And, I, it.

of you that's like, feeling like you're missing out on part of the creative thing because
Claude is giving you something to start with?

Are you ever like, you know what, like I might've done that differently, but now because
it's already there, I'm just going to assume that the way Claude's doing is okay.

Or is that not a problem?

No, no, like if anything, it's like, it's very mentally freeing, because I'm not spending
so much time thinking about those little, like, details on how it's built.

So I feel like I'm more mentally free to think about more of the product design.

So it's like, I'll just be like, yeah, you know what, don't like, I actually don't like
the way it did this.

I'm gonna come up with a new idea for this, and I just feel like, I can be creative here.

And another thing, it's building code.

So it's actually, everything's gonna be like functional.

It's like, you know.

If I was doing in Figma I'd have to prototype it and create many artboards to explain the
thinking of it.

uh Yeah.

Are there limitations?

Cause one of the things I'm imagining, like for example, I tried to make a podcast art for
a podcast, actually for this podcast, when I was in first making it, was like, I'm going

to try and do all the things I would normally do by hand in a podcast, as many of them as
possible by AI to just see what the experience is like on my AI podcast.

And I remember one of the tools I used actually created images.

think like

Gemini could create an image and Claude could create an image.

No, maybe not Claude, ChatGPT.

And then another tool, probably Claude, all it could do was create JavaScript.

So like it used JavaScript to lay stuff out in a box to try and look like something, but
because of the fact that it was in code, it was limited in its creativity and it gave me

much more boring ones.

Do you feel any limitations in your ability to be as creative when you're working in code?

Like you're not gonna be like, hey,

do this thing and you know that thing is only possible if you spend some time in Figma,
Photoshop, or Illustrator.

Is it constraining you more to work with the things that are easy to do in HTML or is that
not a problem you're feeling?

I haven't run into that yet.

So I will say, like I still do pop into Figma uh to, if I need to work with like icons and
stuff, like vector graphics, I need to pop into Figma and make stuff like that.

um And I'd say like rich graphics and stuff, I'll need to, I haven't done a lot of that
yet.

Like it's still so new.

Like I'm just trying to like, uh

I'm trying to see what I could do with just the base tooling, you know what I mean?

I haven't spent a lot of time making really rich graphical interfaces yet with fancy
illustrations and stuff.

So I pop into Figma to do that kind of stuff.

I sometimes open up Paper, because Paper, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Paper.

Yeah, they do shaders.

Those are like those fancy, like elaborate sort of graphics that like if you go to like
the Stripe homepage, that big animated thing at the top is like a shader.

ah So paper does that.

So I'll go into paper and make a shader and then just copy the code for that, bring it
into Claude and say, here's, yeah.

And I, yeah, I know paper does is I need to spend some time in that too.

Just like, I know they have, they kind of have like a, it kind of uses Claude.

I honestly haven't spent much time.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and just to be clear, you're not here to be the person who knows about everything
that's ever happened in AI and the design world.

I just want to talk to you about you because I think a lot of people come in the podcast
and they're like, well, I have to represent the entirety of the world of writers or, I'm

like, no, man, I just want to know what your life is like.

Dude, I feel like for a long time, I was just like, I was behind.

Like all these new tools are coming up.

I'm like, I don't want to.

Like I'm just, I'm 40 now.

I don't have the energy to like learn this new thing.

And so I was always behind, but this time I feel like, oh, I'm actually, it feels like I'm
like an earlier adopter on this thing.

I remember I was like, like, I used to use Photoshop way back in the day.

And I was like one of the,

I feel like I was one of the early adopters for Sketch, right?

And I was telling everyone about Sketch and everyone was getting on it.

And I was hungry and eager and trying new tools and stuff.

And that is just, you know, it's just.

before the podcast about the fact that, you know, like, you're like, look, I've got young
kids, one of them didn't sleep very well for a while.

I was exhausted.

And part of what I want to ask is like, I'm finding that as people age, they get, you
know, not finding.

I've read studies and it's followed with my real life that as people age, they get less
likely to want to try new things.

You're happy in the way the thing's working and your brain just kind of like gets less,
less flexible.

I plasticity is one of the phrases they use.

So.

Yeah, you said you're 40, you are a successful business owner of a business that is gonna
pay for it.

You you guys are good, right?

And you're making a huge shift here.

And we haven't even talked about your new product that you guys are working on.

Have you been anxious?

Have you been fearful at any point?

Have you been nervous?

Or you're just like, nah, this is just fun.

I'm just having fun right now.

Am I nervous?

Like in what regard?

Like as like AI is gonna...

my job's gonna get replaced or I'm gonna make a bet on this and I'm gonna do it wrong or
you know, just like, do you feel freedom in discovering this stuff or are you working on

an underturn to fear?

Okay.

because we're like, I feel kind of set up comfortably right now because of the success of
Tailwind Labs.

I do think about stuff, like I do think about the stuff with my kids a little bit.

It's like my kids' jobs probably aren't invented yet.

You know what I mean?

And I do think about like, what is the world going to look like for them?

Because everything's moving so quickly right now.

It does feel very overwhelming.

But I don't think about, I feel very free right now to just explore and have fun with this
stuff.

I love that.

I still want to like, I'm still hungry to like, like, we're like, as you know, we're
working on UI.sh.

It's, I, I, there's a lot of curiosity there and there's a lot to, we're, we're still
learning about the best way to make this product too.

And we're, so yeah.

Well, I mean, that's a perfect transition.

I would love to talk about it.

So you guys just recently, I mean, it's not even live to the whole Internet, but you're
starting to trickle out invites to something called UI.sh, has some of these kind of

convenience and niceties for doing design related stuff on the Internet when you're using
tools like Claude.

Could you kind of give us a pitch for what it is and what has your role been in creating
it?

Yeah.

So, so UI.SH, it's a toolkit for your coding agent.

So if you're using Claude, um we find a lot of people who have kind of adopted are using
Codex or Cursor, whatever, whatever your agent is.

uh If you're using one of these agents and you install UI.SH, I can comfortably say that
the designs will look better.

The code will be more accessible and be implemented more correctly and predictably.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, that's a big promise, so I'll take it.

Yeah, I'd say our goal right now is to output something that looks like it wasn't
obviously generated by AI.

And what I mean by that is like it won't default to indigo as a primary color.

The grays won't be overly saturated with a hint of blue.

ah It'll have more thoughtful considerations for typography and color.

ah It will provide more unique

layout ideas and just fix a lot of mistakes that we see on the implementation side.

uh It's not yet, it's not like a one-shot design, like a linear, Stripe-quality website.

uh It won't get that all right on the first try.

It's not that I cautiously say yet, like, you know, we're learning so much and uh right
now, stylistically, we...

We have a very narrow focus to make everything just feel clean and modern.

But we do want to expand on that and provide a variety of different design styles.

You could almost say that UI.sh is like the second edition of refactoring UI.

I'd say, yeah.

But we just want to continue making improvements in the code quality and design right now.

We also just want to understand how people are using it.

So like you said, we're

slowly bringing people in.

I think we're bringing about 2,500 people a day in right now.

I think there's like over 20,000 people signed up on the mailing list.

So it'll take a few weeks for all of that.

And then just new people are signing up every day.

now that like more people are coming in, more people are talking about it on Twitter.

But the feedback has been pretty positive so far.

to hear it.

Okay, so you said it's like refactoring UI.

So for those not familiar, refactoring UI was basically saying, uh hey, developers who
don't understand design, it's not just this magical, mystical thing.

There's actually kind of like systems and rules and practices you can follow that will
make the quality of output better design wise.

And it was knowing the limitations and the mindsets of developers.

how do we bring design mentality and methodology to them?

So what you're saying is it's the same thing except for instead of word developers, it's
agents, right?

Like, you know what the common practices of agents doing design are, you know what the
common shortcomings are, you know what mistakes they make, you know what makes something

look like a slop-coded AI design, and you're trying to build correctives for those
specific things using your designer's eye on them.

Okay.

So it's tools that plug into all of your...

things, would you recommend them for uh developers and would you recommend them for
designers and would you recommend them for anybody else?

Like who's it targeted towards?

I'd say like.

I mean, we're trying to build the tool we want to use ourselves.

You know what I mean?

it's so in that regard, it's yeah, it's for, I'd say it helps me that just kind of...

it helps me with that.

Just correct all the immediate things that I was going to correct anyway.

You know what I mean?

And I'd say it's a better starting point for developers who just don't have a design eye.

It's, uh But like, I'm just a very, I'm the kind of guy that likes to customize every
single new project.

I, but it's like, I, so I like using it as a starting point and

Yeah.

So as you think about being on a team, cause a lot of these conversations around how
people use Claude are imagining it's a one person shop, but the vast majority of them

aren't, right?

So imagine you're working on a team of developers.

You're the one designer on the project and all the developers have Claude and UI.sh.

Where do you want to slot in there?

Should they do any?

front end code at all, or should they just leave that entire look to you and Claude and
UI.sh?

Like is it better for you to get the blank page, or is it better for them to do the best
work they can do as developers with UI.sh and then pass it over to you afterwards?

Yeah, okay.

I...

Yeah, it's funny you asked that because like, yeah, I feel like I'm now a developer at my
company now.

And that feels, uh, now I certainly haven't replaced any developer job at my company.

they're all, but, um, I'm just like another developer hat.

Like it's, I can, I'd say like, I, the example I can use at our company, like when we were
doing tailwind UI and creating

uh components for Tailwind UI.

Like it was always, the process was always, I was in Figma and I was designing the
component, I was designing all the breakpoints and then I was handing that off to Jonathan

or whoever was going to build it.

And I don't think, there's always something to do in our company.

So it was never a bottleneck, but I'd hand something off, but it still wouldn't be built
for a long time after that.

Now I can just like,

work in Claude and I can essentially build it now, the code quality still needs to be in
check, right?

And that's where UI.sh come in and hopefully we can refine it to a point where it's uh
gonna get, the code is gonna be just as good as if like just Adam wrote the code himself.

You know what I mean?

uh Yeah, so I can speak to like about like maybe what my role might be on a UI.sh.

like when you inject UI.sh into your project.

But in a lot of ways, hopefully, I don't know the developer's role so much, because I'm
just not the developer.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Well one thing interesting about that is I don't know if you kind of saw it but Justin
Jackson our shared our mutual friend Was talking recently about how it's sort of like a

lot of companies You've got the the spider-man meme and each of the space you got the
product developer You've got the designer and you've got the programmer all being like

wanting to take each other's roles because they're like oh as a developer with AI I can do
product leadership and I can do you know design and as a designer I can do this and this

the other and

He said, are you seeing this problem and is this a problem?

And I personally, just because of way Tighten's shaped, we're not seeing it.

But I definitely can imagine, you know, folks where there's much more of like a defined
team, like you're seeing it.

But it sounds like to you, you're like, yeah, like I can do things and maybe they can do
things they couldn't before.

And the end result is we're making more.

You said there's no less developer jobs as a result of this, right?

Yeah, I'd say like, you know, I'll do the first pass of the design, but I can now hand it
off to a developer.

But now with all the information that's been provided by me, they can now work on the
design and they're not just working from scratch, right?

So they can now feel like a designer, but they're just working on like that.

Cause it's, I find that LLMs are really good at like, if you have a good starting point,
it can make pretty

good decisions on that stuff.

Yeah.

um That kind of definitely takes me down the road of just like continue this conversation
around are we afraid?

um We mentioned the fact that you're like, look, I'm not afraid right now for my career,
but you also mentioned you're not afraid about people at Tailwind losing their jobs as

result of AI.

Now, again, one of the things that Adam and I talked about is AI's impact on Tailwind as
an education company, you know, had that, but that was, that was AI's changing the need

for the final product, not

AI is changing the need for the developers working at the company.

So from a place where if we're not worried about us having jobs, I feel like the two end
results there are a combination of we ship more and we maybe have more peaceful lives.

And again, we talked a little bit about how you and I both have had, you know, kids who
don't sleep through the night and how there's times and phases in your life where you're

not able to, you know, just kind of be as actively involved in the world as you want.

Have you found that using AI makes more time or takes away more time?

from whether the parts of your job that you enjoy or your personal life.

Is it having much of an impact on those things?

It's a bit of all those things right now.

I'll explain.

Like, it's so powerful that I feel like I could do...

It's Certainly not taking anything away from me It is like freeing me up, but there's
still like I feel because it's so new there's so much I want to do and so much I want to

explore that uh I Like I'm really enjoying sitting at my desk right now, you know what I
mean, but it yeah Dude when I first started using it, it's like

Like I said, I think it was near the end of January and I got Claude installed and I doing
stuff.

I spent like a day on it.

It was like a Friday that this happened.

And then the weekend came up.

But the next week I was going on a family vacation and I was just on this high of like,
like obviously I'm like, I wanna enjoy my family vacation, but gosh, this is really

exciting here.

Yeah, I need to get back to it.

uh

So familiar.

But and then.

That first month, I'd say the first, so like side note, like I recently got like assessed
for ADHD and if you know me, like sure, yeah.

Yeah, so I got formally diagnosed with ADHD.

So they prescribed me Concerta and like, yeah, Concerta combined with this, this Claude
code, dude, I was just locked.

I was locked in.

I'm like, how can I?

get more like I I don't even know how this relates back to the original question you asked
like it's like yeah I just feel like I it's freeing in a lot of ways okay I feel it almost

brought like peace of mind it's like okay I can I can I can I can do so much more than I
could before and I can work way faster and as a company I think we can really plow ahead

right now uh

But, and I guess mentally it was very freeing.

And so, you in a lot of ways I didn't take work into the evening.

I wouldn't like, like, I felt like less stressed in some ways for a minute there.

uh But also I was just really excited.

So I was just locked in.

Yeah, well a lot of people when they get really excited and really locked in they really
have that problem you're talking about where you're like I should be with my family or I

should be at this party and I'm gonna go worry about burning tokens.

I haven't heard you talk much about the anxiety of wasting tokens.

It's more just the excitement of trying something new.

Do you have any of that?

if I'm not, if I don't have an agent running I'm wasting my time kind of energy.

Oh no, I don't keep things running in the background.

I guess it was just like, you know,

For many years at the company, I felt like,

We always had an idea of what we were gonna work on next, right?

And I felt like it was getting to a point where it's like, I don't know if we have any
ideas left, we felt like we were getting to the end of the line of ideas, or if we did

have an idea, it was super ambitious.

And it's like, ugh, again, this age thing is creeping up on me.

It's like, I don't have the energy to do that thing that's super ambitious.

And

As soon as I started diving into Claude and all that stuff, I feel like, oh, OK, that's, I
felt like a lot of pressure was taken off there.

It's like, OK, there's something here.

Like, this is really exciting.

Let's go, you know.

Yeah.

say like there's something here in terms of this there's some

question, don't, you're like running through the tokens and stuff.

Like I'd occupy no part of, I don't even know what plan I'm on.

Like I'm just, I'm burning tokens.

I don't, yeah.

Yeah.

There's the...

so you mentioned how there's something here, like you're excited because there's something
in the world of agentic coding that you guys can contribute to the world.

Is there a part where some of those dreams that were so big they made you nervous, do they
feel more accessible because of AI?

Well, I think for a while

We were like excited about this AI world, but we didn't know our role in it.

We didn't know like what's our, where does Tailwind fit in this world?

And even when I started using Claude, I didn't even know what it We didn't know what it
was yet, but we knew there was something, like I felt like, there's something here that

we're like gonna think of in the coming weeks.

And that feels exciting.

Yeah, I hope so.

beginning of it, right?

One of the cool things about UI.sh is it's not a defined and done thing, right?

You can continue helping us.

Yeah, we made it very clear, like when you...

uh

Like people are on the newsletter and then when they get their invite, they get a long
email explaining what UI.SH is right now, what it isn't.

kind of in this like, we did something different than what we normally do with previous
product launches.

Like our previous product launches, everything was just sort of, had a very done, complete
version of it.

uh UI.SH feels...

a little bit of an early launch and we make that very clear in the initial email.

um Yeah, I'm like, I'm seeing like tweets and people are like wondering, like people are
talking about it and people are like, what is it?

I still don't understand what it is.

And I went and like reread the email.

like, did we make that very clear?

I hope we did because it's like, yeah, it's still early in that regard.

So, I mean, I asked you at the beginning of the podcast to say what it is, but if
somebody, if you had 250 characters, so you're giving your, what is the elevator pitch for

what UI.SH is, the short version?

uh I mean, basically the headline that's on the website right now, what does it say on the
website?

Let me just read it out loud.

Turn your terminal into an interface designer, a toolkit for coding agents like Claude
code, AMP, cursor, open code, and codecs to help you build UIs that don't suck.

I mean, it's pretty clear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

lot underneath the hood that it's like, you know.

Yeah, so we've talked a lot about what AI means when it comes to your career.

We haven't talked quite as much about kind of how you look at it more like philosophically
and how it attaches to your personal life.

So I'm going give you a two pronged question.

In a second, I'm going to ask about what you think like AI means for the whole broad
world.

But first, I just want to ask like, what is your interaction with AI

outside of work?

you using chat GPT for stuff for your kids?

Are you, you know, planning family vacations?

Are you sort of like when I step away from the work desk, AI is not involved in my life?

no, I use it every day.

Like, Chat GPT yeah, definitely.

um Yeah, like, I wouldn't...

You know, sometimes I'm like talking to Chat GPT and it's like, you know, it's not like a
therapist, but like, you're asking questions, it gives you like some reassurance, like,

this is therapy, you know what I mean?

It's...

uh But I...

It's replaced Google for me in a lot of ways, you know?

I basically use like, uh Chat GPT or it's like a Google search...

with Reddit at the end of my search.

Those are my, yeah.

So, because if I need a product recommendation or something, I'll type in the product name
and then type Reddit.

Yeah, because I just find you get, there's more conversation, there's more dialogue there.

uh But yeah, I use Chat GPT every day.

I use it mostly for, I ask a lot of health questions, stuff we were talking earlier before
we started recording, but you know.

My whole YouTube algorithm is all wellness, sort of, there's a lot of that stuff.

I'd say a lot of my conversation history in Chat GPT is regarding, I have lot of meal
plans in there.

It's like I need a meal, you know, uh where I wanna have, I wanna create a lunch that has
X amount of fiber in it X amount of protein in it and can you create a little thing for

me?

That's how I use it mostly personally.

And there's other kinds of, I mean, I'm not gonna bring up my conversation history.

I brought mine up and I'm looking over it I'm like, yeah, it's a mixture of like little
useful tasks, stuff for the kids.

how do I find full-size soccer goals in Atlanta?

And then there's a whole bunch of health stuff, you know, like I was trying to remember
what it is, but there's a specific thing.

I'm like, I'm trying to make sure that I have, I'm living a life that generates less of
this very negative chemical.

You know, what are the scientifically proven, you know, things that cause that to happen?

How do I make sure I minimize those in my life kind of thing?

So.

Dude, made a, here's a good one, I made a.

Easter happened and you know because I'm not sure if you watch Bluey I don't know how old
your kids are yeah so there's absolutely where they do the Easter egg hunt and they have

to like solve the riddles or whatever so I do that for like

13, so I saw like the first couple seasons and now I'm totally out of date, so.

episode where they wake up in the morning and they have to go on the Easter hunt.

And then at the end is their big Easter surprise.

So ever since that, I've been doing that every year for my kids.

And I try to make it rhyme.

Everything's like a riddle.

And I try to make it harder every year because they're a bit older and they can figure out
the clues.

And I make it rhyme and everything.

And I had Chat GPT come up with my whole scavenger hunt that I did the other day with the
kids.

was, yeah.

So I mean, you seem pretty positive on it and I know that you don't wanna be the person
who comes out and says, this is the future of the world because of AI.

But do you generally, do you live with any form of feeling like you know what the future
of the world is because of AI?

Or are you kinda just like, look, I'm gonna teach each thing that goes.

Are you like, the future is better or worse because of AI?

Or you're just sorta like, I don't know what's coming and yeah, okay.

yeah, it's, some days I get...

No, I don't know.

I'm just taking it day by day.

I don't think about it too hard.

Yeah.

I wish I had more predictions on that stuff, but it's just, dude, it's wild, man.

It's wild when you look at it like five years ago.

Like when did Chat GPT launch?

You gotta ask Chachbi T that, don't you?

I have 2022 in my November 20th, November 30th, 2022.

Yep.

Yeah.

And sometimes it feels like it came out last year and sometimes it feels like it's been
forever.

So.

like when I, like again, when I started using Claude, like,

skills weren't really introduced until November.

When did when did Claude Code even come out?

learn that one.

There's some people I know who have all these like perfectly memorized.

like, I don't understand.

Okay.

February, 2025.

It's a year.

I know.

So like I started using Claude code and for design and I feel like I'm early on it.

I don't know if I'm like an early adopter or not.

But on the grand scheme, when I see activity on Twitter with our designers, but I also
feel like I'm very behind.

Like what it was out a year earlier than I started using it.

Like think about how far it had to be right now if I start using it then like what I what
what all.

things could I unlock.

So that's how quick it's moving.

Like you feel, I feel ahead, but it's also like behind in a lot of ways.

I mean, when I talk to people, so I run a consultancy, so I talk to a lot of people who
have applications that they're paying money for or want applications built.

So they're still kind of top tier people in terms of using internet technologies.

And when I tell you the difference between just the people I talk to in business
development context versus our Twitter world, I'm like, no, because those people are in

the top five, 2 % of being on top of things.

And if you compare their level of confidence and awareness and being on top of the latest
versus the people on Twitter, people on Twitter are gonna make you think that if you are

not using this system that came out yesterday, you're gonna lose your job and be the
permanent underclass.

When in reality, if you're just gonna kinda go talk to your family, you know, go talk to
your family over Easter, they have no idea what any of stuff is.

So you are so ahead of the game, so advanced, man.

like when I talk to like my neighbors, they'll be like, you know, be asking my work and uh
like some of them kind of know like a few developer neighbors, but some of my neighbors

are just like, whatever, they're just work.

Like they're a teacher or a doctor or something like that.

uh They're not in the tech world at all.

And I'll be like talking about my job.

be like, yeah, like right, like right now I'm like,

kind of like teaching AI how to design in a lot of like, you know, I mean, that's like
sort of the simplified version of it.

And they're like, wow, you must be like, I'm like, it's way simpler than you think it is.

I'm just talking to it like a human.

Yeah, I'm not like, no, there's like smart people in San Francisco doing that stuff.

I'm just like literally talking to like a human and hopefully it understands me.

Most of the time it doesn't.

Yeah.

I love that.

Okay.

So we are close to time.

So we're to start wrapping up.

But before I do my wrap up stuff, Steve, is there anything that you think people should be
thinking about that they're not?

Or is there anything else you wanted to make sure you got a chance to talk about today?

I think we've captured

all my thoughts.

Perfect.

Well, you know, one of the last things I do at the end of every podcast is first of all, I
want to make sure people can follow you.

So if people are interested in Steve Schoger, they were interested in learning about tail
wind labs, UI.sh, or if they want to think about more about what does it look like for a

designer to use AI?

Where do they follow you and keep up with you?

Yeah, I'm, well I'm not incredibly active on Twitter anymore like I used to be, but I'm on
there.

So you can find me, like my handle's at Steve Schoger and that's like the handle I use for
most of my socials.

And then I'm starting to post on YouTube more and it's same handles at Steve Schoger uh
sure.

Well then the last thing I do is I ask people to share some practical tips they use for
their day-to-day interaction with AI.

And so we've got one here from Drew Richard.

He says, we're going to Iceland in August, although I think this must be this past August
at this point.

And I'm going to use it to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Planning, timing, scheduling, and probably helping with the packing list.

um I don't know about you, I have, actually I do know about you because you said you use
it instead of Google now.

I have found that replacing,

something a human did with AI is usually not super likely to be accessible unless that
person was doing rote work that they didn't enjoy doing and it was boring and it was

mindless and they're really happy to have it gone.

But replacing stuff that other computer systems did with AI is really where it shines for
me.

I'm just sort of like, Google was, Google is a pre-AI.

It's trying to understand my intent.

It's trying to understand the contents it's working with.

And so replacing one computer system that's doing an okay job of finding surfacing stuff
for me with a computer system that's doing a better job of surfacing things for me.

I'm like, great, this makes sense.

Nobody's losing here, right?

Or, you know, the packing list.

I mean, the packing list is somewhat the ADHD.

I don't care where the help is coming from.

If you can help me with the packing list, I'm gonna take it, you know?

So yeah, I like that one.

to Iceland, that guy, I went to Iceland last year around that time.

That guy needs to go on a hike.

Who's this person?

Drew Richard, unfortunately I just have their names in the Trello card, I don't have them,
but I can go hunt him down.

I got a recommendation for that guy.

He's going on this hike.

It's called...

uh

I love this.

uh Iceland.

I just gotta type in Iceland Hikes and then if I want to see the name I know it.

I'm gonna get this.

It's called...

Skogafoss?

S-K-O-G-A-F-O-S-S.

Dude, that was the, it was like walking into a painting.

It was the most surreal thing I've ever seen in my life.

Like, it's a long hike.

It was like a six hour thing.

And it was adventurous too.

Like we had to tread through water.

It was like a high current.

Like there was like one of those situations if you took a slip, that could have been bad.

But ah that was a very surreal moment in my life.

Just witnessing that.

You were so high up in the mountain.

and you're looking down at a waterfall and you see like bird, like seagulls flying around.

And it was like being in one of those old Disney movies that are like hand illustrated and
stuff.

And yeah, dude, wild.

I have it pulled up here and it doesn't look real.

It absolutely looks like something that would be first of all, it'd be in the background
of my, um, my windows machine, you know, back to the day.

Yeah, exactly.

that's so cool.

Well, hopefully when drew said he's going to Iceland in August, this was this coming
August, not next August.

Unfortunately don't remember when I asked this question, but even if not, if anybody else
goes or drew, if you go back, you got to check this one out and we'll put a link to, um,

to this particular page that I pulled up school office and the water waterfall way hike.

Iceland in the show notes for anybody who wants to check it out.

I'm sold.

All right.

Well, Steve, uh you know I love hanging out with you.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us.

Thank you so much for hanging out today.

Yeah man, good catching up again.

When did I see you last?

It's been a few years, dude.

2022 or 2023 because I because I know you met Imani and that was yeah, so it was sometime
around them.

Yep.

So it's been too long.

We're gonna have to do it again.

I know, yeah, I don't really...

You always go to the Laravel conferences,

Yeah, yeah, just come to any Laracon Or if we do wire live again, if we it's in Boston and
end of July.

Yeah, I'm going to Boston in June.

We're going to one of the World Cup games.

Yeah, so I probably won't go again, but I don't know.

Another time,

are these years?

ah I think we're trying to get Caleb Porzio to do Wire Live in Buffalo again.

that might be a drive for you guys, right?

Okay, we're gonna get you to one of those and I will see you there.

Everybody else, thank you so much for hanging out and we will see you all next time.