I’ve been building my portfolio site, and a lot of it I didn’t build alone. I’ve been working next to AI for most of it. Okay fine, I’m lying, ALL of it. It writes code faster than I used to, it doesn’t get tired, and on a good day it feels like a second set of hands that never asks for a break.

Last week, I hit CMD+F on my website, looking for a number I’d just changed. The browser found it. Highlighted it. And then nothing happened. The page didn’t move. The thing I was looking for was sitting somewhere off-screen, and the site just left me there staring at a result I couldn’t see.

Small thing. Took me a couple minutes to figure out why, a bit longer to fix.

But here’s what stuck with me. The AI that helped me build that page would have never caught it. Not because it isn’t, it’s plenty smart. It’s because it never uses what it builds. It doesn’t hit CMD+F looking for something. It doesn’t feel that tiny jab of annoyance when the page won’t take you where you asked to go. That friction is invisible unless there’s a person on the other end trying to do a person thing.

Everyone keeps asking the same question right now:

if the machine can build the interface, what’s left for us?

I think this is part of the answer. The using, the caring, the getting quietly annoyed at your own work and refusing to let it slide.

Taste isn’t some mystical gift. A lot of it is just friction you won’t ignore. The thing felt slightly off and you wouldn’t walk past it. That’s the whole skill. And it turns out that’s the one part I can’t hand to the machine.

The robot writes the code. I’m the one who has to live in it.

Still building. Still hitting CMD+F on my own stuff and wincing.

– Mujtaba M