Show HN: StyleSeed – a design-rules engine so AI agents stop building generic UI | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: StyleSeed – a design-rules engine so AI agents stop building generic UI

github.com

24 pointsbitjaru040210 comments

I’d recommend a different approach if you’re looking for unique, non-LLM looking styles. Consider trying diffusion as a starting point, then feeding that into an LLM to build.

Ie here are some results:

https://html.non.io/tarot

https://html.non.io/hydroponics

https://html.non.io/solara

All of these started with diffusion renders as a starting point.

LLMs have intrinsic problems when it comes to design. They write code to represent design, but are trained to write consistent code. Consistent code is great if you’re writing a backend function that handles financial, but for design you end up with similar looks. You can use LLMs to police themselves, but it’s still like using backend engineers to review other backend engineers’ designs.

I left Figma to go build a UI design tool based off of diffusion because of this issue. I have a full walkthrough of how I build that tarot page here: https://x.com/pwnies/status/2076755344471289898?s=46&t=bwJTI...

Oh one warning - I didn’t optimize any of these for mobile. The hydroponics one does use some device motion for a cool effect though.

If you consider these non-LLM looking, I have some news for you (not that they don't look good to be clear)

Thanks this idea is great.

Anything that can be one-shotted can be one-shotted by anyone. You need a process that gets better results than a one-shot, or one-shotters is all you'll ever be able to make. Playing around using image models then taking that to a design system is a great way to make something more personal and original.

And constraining a model to write working code for a design right away is going to limit it.

I'll definitely use the idea - thanks for sharing.

> taking that to a design system is a great way to make something more personal and original

Indeed, that's why the "brands" feature exists. Once you have 5 screens on canvas you like, select all of them, right click and select "Create brand". That will extract and create an internal representation of a design system so that all future screens are in that look/feel/style.

I ran Design Systems for 5 years over at Figma - this part is very important to me.

While I empathize a lot with the issue of agents building super generic "vibe-coded" UIs, the webpage linked from the Github provides a Showcase with presets in the style of Notion, Vercel, Linear etc. which just change the color / theme not the actual design to match that of these companies which I thought was the point of the design skills?

This is really cool. What learnings would you say you could extract on the design side from the Watergate scandal, and how do you think StyleSeed applies to those learnings?

There are actually quite a few elements failing the Lighthouse accessibility audit.

This page also has 26 emdashes on it. For a page that isn’t an article, that seems pretty high.

- LLMs are not good for design

- LLMs lack so far in anything that involves actual human creativity

- Sure they can build the most generic prototype of a webapp that is needed but they sure as hell wont make a unique one

I'm liking the idea of the project, but you're spending too many tokens on critic prompts for things that should be deterministic.

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