The five best design links, every weekday

Wednesday08/12

1

blog.mozilla.org

Let your designs fail for the right reasons

How AI-assisted native prototypes changed what usability testing could show.

2

state-of-ai-in-design-systems.netlify.app

State of AI in Design Systems

A field study of how 20 open-source design systems and 6 platforms make themselves readable to AI agents.

3

beautifului.dev

Beautiful UI

A small library of extremely crafted, copy-paste components for chat agents, thinking states, human-in-the-loop approvals, and everything agents need.

4

taylor.town

I’m leaving OpenAI to build Jurassic Park

Gonna send you back to the stone age.

5

2026.stateofcss.com

State of CSS 2026

The results are in. Developer adoption across modern CSS features—empirical data on layout practices and usage.

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Tuesday08/11

1

uxdesign.cc

Bottle your judgment and make it outlive you

The most valuable thing you own dies with you, unless you get it out of your head. Let a machine and the person next to you finally use it.

2

thehtml.review

The HTML review 05

An annual journal of literature made to exist on the web.

3

blog.senko.net

“Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers

The software development profession is in the midst of upheaval. And there's a gross insult to all programmers everywhere.

4

aipotluck.org

AI Potluck

Mapping the open source AI stack to understand what’s missing. Now, together, we can close them.

5

martin.janiczek.cz

Systems and delays

Where delays are shown to be counterintuitive.

Monday08/10

1

bit.ly

The AI Notepad for back-to-back meetingsSponsored

The AI notepad for back-to-back meetings. Notes, actions and memory. Without a meeting bot.

2

notashelf.dev

Taste is all that's left

How automated output turns taste into the primary filter for software and product design.

3

agent-plugins.org

Agent plugins

A portable package format for reusable components that extend AI agents.

4

jarango.com

What’s the purpose of information architecture?

Fifty years after its formal introduction, the discipline of IA is still widely misunderstood. Here‘s a corrective.

5

joost.blog

The future of the website

Websites aren’t dying, but their job is changing: agent-readable surfaces, MCP servers, and verifiable authenticity.

Friday08/07

1

hvpandya.com

The hierarchy of competence

Nine stages of how people operate at work, in strict order, where each one is measured by a job it removes from your manager.

2

crashcat.dev

Crashcat

A 3D rigid body physics engine for JavaScript, designed for games and simulations.

3

microsoft.design

What happens when you can’t hide behind craft

In an era where AI has made execution nearly free, the designer’s true value no longer lies in craft alone but in having a genuine point of view.

4

headlines.games

Headlines Game

Guess the year. 5 real headlines a day.

5

nicolo.xyz

Something is changing in the unit economics of software

Why AI is compressing software margins, and what that does to the SaaS playbook.

Thursday08/06

1

writing.mariusz.cc

The last product design tool

Honey, wake up, wireframes are so back.

2

benji.org

Drawesome

Drawing toolbar for React. Seven pens, an eraser, SVG and PNG export, no dependencies beyond React. Two lines to drop into an app.

3

figma.com

Code, craft, and the making of nested folders

From treating code as a proposal to turning handoffs into conversations, here’s how we shaped a new way of working to ship nested folders.

4

the-idea-machine.com

The idea machine

Pull the lever to generate a random project or app idea—a surprise mashup of a life space, a product format, and a twist.

5

zachholman.com

The cold email

Three of the biggest changes in my life all stemmed, in part, from cold outreach.

Wednesday08/05

1

yeseniaperezcruz.substack.com

The plateau of sad gray icons

Everyone wants to teach AI agents good taste. I just want them to stop filling every surface with icons in soft gray containers.

2

yummy-design-sprint.notion.site

Notion: design & AI workflows

Build and orchestrate agents right alongside your team’s projects, meetings, and connected apps.

3

stackoverflow.blog

Developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust

If your kitchen knife kept changing shape, weight, and edge, you’d have to relearn it every time.

4

ditherit.com

Dither it

Free online image dithering tool. Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, Bayer ordered dithering, animated GIFs, and multi-image upload.

5

bjorg.bjornroche.com

The AI productivity gap

Why the productivity gains from AI are still small.

Tuesday08/04

1

uxdesign.cc

Designing for the proxy

Why AI is changing who reads first.

2

anthropeum.com

Anthropeum

A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Guess where and when each artifact was made.

3

spectrum.ieee.org

The computer that helped win World War II

How Colossus cracked Germany’s encrypted communications.

4

misery.co

ShaderPad

A lightweight, dependency-free library that reduces boilerplate when working with fragment shaders.

5

dylancastillo.co

Are AI labs pelicanmaxxing?

Generating 1,000+ SVGs across 7 frontier models to test whether AI labs are training on Simon Willison’s pelican-riding-a-bicycle benchmark.

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