1. Intent & Communication
Why AI cannot infer what you mean — even when you explain it
- AI Can’t Read Your Mind — And Design Lives in Your Head
- The Hidden Work Behind “AI Generated This”
- Why Prompts Are a Lossy Interface for Design Intent
- The Difference Between Explaining Behavior and Explaining Shape
- Implicit Constraints vs Explicit Instructions
- Why “You Know What I Mean” Fails With AI
- Design Intent Exists Between the Lines — AI Only Sees the Lines
2. Design Authority & Taste
Why design is about rejection, not generation
- AI Has No Taste — and Taste Is the Job
- Why Reasonable Designs Can Still Be Wrong
- Design Is a Series of “No” Decisions
- Why AI Over-Generates Abstractions You Didn’t Ask For
- Naming, Boundaries, and Responsibility: The Unspoken Design Layer
- Why Consistency Matters More Than Cleverness
3. Code-Level Design Failure Modes
Where AI-generated code “works” but is still wrong
- Correct Code, Wrong Shape
- Why AI Loves Helpers, Utilities, and Glue Code
- The Abstraction Drift Problem
- Why AI Breaks Encapsulation While Fixing Bugs
- Local Refactors That Destroy Global Clarity
- When DRY Becomes Design Debt
- Why AI Can’t Hold a Stable Mental Model of Your Codebase
4. System-Level Design Failure Modes
Same problem — bigger consequences
- AI Can’t Design Systems It Has to Live With
- Why System Design Is Mostly About Constraints
- AI Doesn’t Know Which Invariants Matter
- Why Generated Architectures Collapse Under Change
- Local Optimizations, Global Failures
- AI Can Describe Architectures — It Can’t Commit to One
- Why Cross-Cutting Concerns Are Where AI Fails Most
- System Design Is Temporal — AI Is Snapshot-Based
5. Iteration & Convergence Failure
Why “just iterate with AI” doesn’t converge
- Why AI Refactors in Circles
- The Prompt–Rewrite Death Spiral
- Why Fixing One Thing Breaks Three Others
- Context Drift Across Sessions
- Why Design Corrections Don’t Compound
- The Illusion of Progress in AI Iteration
- Why Humans Feel Fatigue Before AI Feels Direction
6. Scale, Time, and Evolution
The dimension AI does not experience
- AI Optimizes for Now — SaaS Lives in the Future
- Why Design Debt Is Invisible at Generation Time
- What Happens at Version 5 That AI Never Anticipates
- Schema Evolution and the Cost of Early Shape
- Why Scale Exposes Design, Not Performance
- The Rewrite Trap AI Accidentally Encourages
7. Why Frameworks Exist
Frameworks as intent compression
- Frameworks Exist to Encode Decisions
- Design Once, Reuse Forever
- Why Structure Beats Freedom at Scale
- Constraints Are What Make Velocity Sustainable
- Frameworks Reduce Degrees of Freedom — and That’s the Point
- Why AI Performs Better Inside Strong Structure
8. The Correct Role of AI
AI as leverage, not authority
- AI Is a Force Multiplier — Not a Design Authority
- What AI Should Decide vs What Humans Must Decide
- Where AI Is Exceptionally Good (And Where It Isn’t)
- AI as an Implementer, Not an Architect
- Why the Best AI Output Comes From Opinionated Foundations
- AI on Top of Structure Beats AI From Scratch
9. SaasEasy
SaasEasy as the substrate, not the star
- SaasEasy as an Intent Container
- Why SaasEasy Reduces Prompting, Not Flexibility
- How SaasEasy Turns AI Into a Reliable Teammate
- Design Alignment as a First-Class Feature
- Why This Isn’t About Lock-In — It’s About Leverage