The Missing Layer: Design Taste in AI Agents — Hassan El Mghari, Together AI
Aug 21, 2026 · 14:10
Hassan El Mghari, developer experience lead at Together AI, argues design taste, not model capability, decides whether AI apps reach millions or read as vibe-coded slop. He ships about 10 apps a year — a few with millions of users — and credits design for that reach. His design skill Hallmark, launched six weeks ago to 10,000+ users, turns AI slop tells like purple gradients and italic headers into gates and supplies themes, since strong inspiration produces better work. He starts in Codex or Claude Code and iterates with cheaper open-source GLM 5.2, whose landing page was nearly indistinguishable from Opus 4.8. He advises saving screenshots as references, using longer prompts from voice notes, one or two features per prompt, and a skill file or AGENTS.md — but agent output is only a base.
