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Congrats on launching. I spent a decade trying to build a design tool. I think I built almost 40 prototypes, to various degrees of completion. Never got to a po

Congrats on launching. I spent a decade trying to build a design tool. I think I built almost 40 prototypes, to various degrees of completion. Never got to a point where I felt it was good enough to share. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, so kudos to you for sticking with it.

vecti 8mo ago
Thank you, and I know exactly what you mean. I myself have rewritten the entire engine ar least three times until I was happy with the performance and the overall outcome. It’s been a long learning experience. As a developer at heart, this project scratched every itch I had from a software engineering perspective :)
- written-beyond 8mo ago
  How much of this release was made easier with LLMs?
- uxcolumbo 8mo ago
  You should write about this, the gotchas and what you learned how to make things performant. Might drive some traffic.
  - alsetmusic 8mo ago
    Yes. This. I read a post-mortem about developing v2 of an app last month because getting insight into the thought process of the builder is super interesting (to me). It's probably not for most people, but it definitely has an audience.
cobertos 8mo ago
Are any of your prototypes published or available to view?
- danielvaughn 8mo ago
  there are various little things scattered around the github org - a js framework, a treesitter grammar, some old docs, a vscode extension, a vim-style editor, an AI-powered code editor geared towards design, etc. https://github.com/matry https://github.com/matry
  - airlocksoftware 8mo ago
    Are you still working on this? Because I like the words I see on your GitHub -- vim-style bindings, keyboard driven, sounds like you write a definition language for your designs, basically? Lik Matry is to Figma as openscad is to traditional CAD (Fusion 360, etc)? Though that does sound like a huge project to take on!
    - danielvaughn 8mo ago
      I don’t know enough about CAD products to evaluate that comparison, but the core idea was to expose language as a design tool. First through code, then through keyboard commands (hence the vim idea). It’s still pretty fun, but LLMs have changed the conversation around what a designer even is, and I’m currently re-evaluating. Matry might pop up in another form. I’m considering turning it into an actual browser for designers. Right now designers are getting into the code and using Claude/Cursor to make changes directly. But they still have to know how to get the app running locally, which is a hurdle. So if they could just navigate to the site, make some design changes directly in the browser, Matry could then take the changes and create a PR on GitHub for them. Designer wouldn’t have to fuss with any dev tools. Kind of a cool idea.

vecti 8mo ago

Thank you, and I know exactly what you mean. I myself have rewritten the entire engine ar least three times until I was happy with the performance and the overall outcome. It’s been a long learning experience. As a developer at heart, this project scratched every itch I had from a software engineering perspective :)

written-beyond 8mo ago
How much of this release was made easier with LLMs?
uxcolumbo 8mo ago
You should write about this, the gotchas and what you learned how to make things performant. Might drive some traffic.
- alsetmusic 8mo ago
  Yes. This. I read a post-mortem about developing v2 of an app last month because getting insight into the thought process of the builder is super interesting (to me). It's probably not for most people, but it definitely has an audience.

cobertos 8mo ago

Are any of your prototypes published or available to view?

danielvaughn 8mo ago
there are various little things scattered around the github org - a js framework, a treesitter grammar, some old docs, a vscode extension, a vim-style editor, an AI-powered code editor geared towards design, etc. https://github.com/matry https://github.com/matry
- airlocksoftware 8mo ago
  Are you still working on this? Because I like the words I see on your GitHub -- vim-style bindings, keyboard driven, sounds like you write a definition language for your designs, basically? Lik Matry is to Figma as openscad is to traditional CAD (Fusion 360, etc)? Though that does sound like a huge project to take on!
  - danielvaughn 8mo ago
    I don’t know enough about CAD products to evaluate that comparison, but the core idea was to expose language as a design tool. First through code, then through keyboard commands (hence the vim idea). It’s still pretty fun, but LLMs have changed the conversation around what a designer even is, and I’m currently re-evaluating. Matry might pop up in another form. I’m considering turning it into an actual browser for designers. Right now designers are getting into the code and using Claude/Cursor to make changes directly. But they still have to know how to get the app running locally, which is a hurdle. So if they could just navigate to the site, make some design changes directly in the browser, Matry could then take the changes and create a PR on GitHub for them. Designer wouldn’t have to fuss with any dev tools. Kind of a cool idea.