Lines of Code Used to Terrify Me. Now I Build Dev Tools.

Lines of code used to terrify me. Now I build my own dev tools. Weird how that happened.

I'm a designer who vibe codes with Claude Code. The scariest part was honestly just opening the terminal for the first time. But once I got over that, I started making small tools to save myself time. Two that I actually use every day:

A custom instruction that scans my changes before I push and flags anything that could break the backend — API stuff, environment configs, routing, dependencies. It gives me a 🟢🟡🔴 risk level and even writes a Slack message I can send to the devs.

Literally one command. Saves me so much anxiety.

Every morning I was manually starting the backend, frontend, Storybook, and Claude Code. Got sick of it, so I asked Claude to write a shell script. Now I type qdev to start. /exit to stop. Done.

Neither took long to set up, but they've genuinely changed how I work. Less fumbling around, fewer "oh no what did I just break" moments, more time actually designing.

The most underrated designer skill right now isn't learning to code. It's being willing to build your own tools.

You really don't need to be an engineer. You just need to be annoyed enough at something repetitive and curious enough to ask "wait, can I automate this?"

If you're a designer who's been curious about vibe coding but hasn't tried it yet, honestly, just start. It's way less scary than it looks.