Writings

A curated run of topics I’ve discussed, workshopped, or otherwise shared to a wide audience. Updated monthly.

(Close)

on Vibecoding
solomaxxing

Vibecoding or the use of ai to develop projects is becoming a super wunderkind of ingenuity for solo founders to enter the market. We have never been in an environment where the capacity to become a viable player of industry is at whims of a user’s imagination. As such I decided to give it a go. Below are some insights related to that:

Day 1 - After first experiment
I feel insanely empowered. I am definitely not stewarding the cleanest or most efficient code yet (because to vibe code isn’t to write code) but what would have taken me probably 4 months of headaches to get going, I’ve got mostly done in 53 hours. This is crazy. I can truly focus on UX and interrogate how to best handle a user journey instead of getting frantic trying to build one.

Day 7 - General Setup
I've been using Cursor + Claude pretty much exclusively.

Claude for prep: "I want to work on this idea, help me sort through the steps to build this out like a project manager (no code)"
Cursor for build: "Here's the concept, here's the steps.
Follow them step by step and we'll test each part of the process before moving to the next part of the build"

Day 10 - Designing in Context
If you guys haven't drawn diagrams for cursor or another llm when you're coding UI you are missing out. Just taking screenshots and annotating them goes an insanely long way rather than trying to just tell it what you want via and a picture of a mockup or something inspired by it. Adding this to my workflow has helped me cut down the number of prompt iterations I've needed by a factor of 3 and that's pretty damn good.

Prompt > Render in Dev > Screenshot > Design & Annotate > New Prompt
The accuracy it has varies depending on how you phrase things and if you use visual aids or not. (Use visual aids whenever possible)

Day 20
When vibe coding, get cursor (or whatever you’re using) to explain what is being done.

START VERY SMALL.
There is no need to get super ambitious. Test the stupid small thing, then progressively scale up. The feeling you get when shit works is the GREATEST hit of dopamine ever.

Take breaks. Like at least a half hour. Drink water, do something else like fold clothes or something—you’ll come up with really good ideas and not feel so bogged down trying to fix things you don’t fully understand yet.

Assisting Context
Farcaster Thread on launching a mini app and statistics
- context (Solara Cosmos)

read

(Close)

on Design
stylemaxxing

To get good you need three things:

1. learn the fundamentals [composition, balance, unity, white space, contrast, etc]

2. practice, practice, and practice [create studies around typography and images practicing various forms of the fundamentals]

3. study from life, visit museums [design is everywhere, seek the fundamentals in everything]

How to practice:

Book 1 / Universal Principles of Design
Exercise 1 / Composition

Create a viewfinder out of a piece of paper. Cut out squares and rectangles of various aspect ratios. Go outside and “frame” what you see within the viewfinder. Sketch what you framed. Observe how your eye moves across those thumbnails. Take a pen or colored pencil and draw the line your eyes take in each composition. Note what you observe. Are you moving in an N, Z, Y, etc. Are you eyes getting tired or cross? Good composition brings ease to your eyes and allows them to take in the full picture upon viewing.

Book 2 / Vignelli Canon
Exercise 2 / Grids and Alignments

Grab some paper. Use a ruler and make several types of grids. Get some magazines and cut out images and text, letters and such until you have a variety of objects in various sizes. Arrange them in these grids while telling a story, selling a product, etc.The goal here is to see if you can capture someone’s attention leveraging what you learned from the composition exercise and building on that with “content”.

General Notes:

999999999% of design is type.

If you know how to arrange type, the rest follows. Photography is a great training tool for arrangement and composition. Adding Type in a photograph forces you to find unity within the “empty space” of the composition creating a new visual whole.

That’s why billboard ads, posters and magazines fucking catch you immediately. Try to make a poster, a small zine, an ad. If ppl can understand it in seconds, you’re close to nailing it. Now part of what people don’t admit is that you end up copying your references A LOT before you can graft them in your own way. The best means to getting better is to have A TON of references (also seeing design in nature) so you can blend them with your POV.

Always be expanding.
Always examine what you see.
Decipher how it works.
Test it.

Sirsu Studio

C.V.

project 01—BLVKHVND

project 02—747 Airlines

project 03—Solara Cosmos

project 04—Stadium

writings

© Sirsu Studio (Sample) — ’25