Learning How to Swing the Sword: AI, Agency, and Vibe Coding
Fri Jun 5, 2026, 3:45PM
For the longest time, I resisted the urge to let AI generate all my code. It felt like I would be giving up control, ownership, and agency. Code was something I wanted to understand, not just something I wanted to receive.
Pretty quickly, though, I saw the power of using LLMs to write, draft, and automate code, especially in repetitive instances. I had already been using AI to help with writing, but with writing it sometimes felt like the tool sucked out a lot of my own voice and flavor. With code, the question felt similar: how do I use this without losing my taste, direction, or agency? What parts of the work still need my hand, and what parts need a faster, tireless collaborator?
I started practicing better prompt engineering. And what I learned from this is that it is not just about the tool you use for the job, it is about how you use the tool for the job.
I recently saw a video of someone cutting bamboo with a katana. The sword looked dull. It kept forcing itself through the thick bamboo stalk, struggling the whole time. Then the master came along: same sword, same bamboo, effortless cut. Recently there has been immense pressure, especially for young developers and designers, to capitalize on AI power as quickly as possible. I understand that pressure, but I also hesitate. I keep arriving at the same thought: it is not the tool, but how the tool is being used.
There is a lot of conversation about where humans intervene now that AI tools are taking over more of the work. I think humans can totally intervene at ideation, in the flow of ideas. It is easier than ever to take an idea and put it into reality, which makes the idea itself, and the taste around it, feel even more important.
Learning how my words, language, references, and moods affect generative models opened the doors to my workflow. Referencing authors, characters, ideas, aesthetics, and atmospheres became part of the material. There may be ethical concerns here, and those concerns are worth taking seriously, but I still feel like these ideas are my own. In this way, as a designer and creative technologist, I still feel like an artist.
Disclaimer: I co-created this web portfolio with Codex. Codex was incredibly powerful, helpful, and easy to use, and it opened a lot of creative space for me. I did not need to sift through code, documentation, or research every best web framework. I could guide Codex in the right direction. But it took some getting used to, and having knowledge in both the arts and software engineering was really helpful.
At first, Codex wanted to build out my website and its interactions, but the results felt boring. It felt like AI slop. So I started by coding myself with HTML and CSS, experimenting until I made something I liked, something I could feed back into Codex. Then I explicitly explained that I wanted full authorship of the creative direction. What I really needed was a good engineer.
Even that was not enough. After I first deployed the site, it was slow and clunky, so I told Codex to think smarter. I offered examples of specific implementation architectures that I thought would work more efficiently, and Codex took it from there. I found Codex to be an incredibly powerful tool, but for it to actually be productive for me, I had to figure out how to wield it the right way: a way that works for me.
Now that it is so easy to make ideas real, we should ask ourselves not only what we are trying to make, but why we are trying to make it. That question forces us to consider what we want to have, and what we want to exist in our world.
With this portfolio, I wanted to capture a human essence, especially because it is so easy to AI-generate any other website. I wanted to be part of the website itself. So on top of AI tools, I augmented the workflow with my own face, scanning it in a Xerox machine and capturing my skin, oils, and discomfort. It is totally weird, but I think that weirdness makes it unique.
I also captured what I enjoy and love: the voices of sci-fi characters like R2-D2, C-3PO, and TARS; ideas from Star Wars and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; aesthetics I find appealing; reference images; other portfolios. I turned these ideas into super prompts, specific examples that Codex could really grab onto and lean into. Another key idea: leverage what you already know, enjoy, and are attracted to.
For me personally, humans can intervene beyond ideation, too. We intervene when we choose what tools we use, and when we design our own workflows, with or without AI. We can choose traditional methods, contemporary methods, futuristic methods, or some strange mix of all three. We are human because of this agency, and we should practice exercising it before it is too late.