Why I design again

2025 Dec 29

AI agents can have working software ready by lunch. What I've come to understand is that I was confusing activity with progress.

Design is a decision-making framework. It reduces the solution space and turns vague ambition into a well-defined problem.

What I kept getting wrong: a well-built output can still be solving the wrong problem. In multi-agent workflows, a bad assumption in problem framing cascades through every layer. It looks like momentum — commits landing, PRs opening, demos running — while drifting far from the actual problem.

What I do differently now: frame the problem before decomposing work into agent-sized tasks. Write explicit acceptance criteria. Design the interfaces between agents rather than letting those boundaries emerge from output. Treat constraints as a first-class artifact.

"AI didn't make design obsolete. It made it the highest-leverage thing I can spend time on."