Emil KowalskiA natural filter for bad ideas.
Summary
Before AI, writing code was expensive enough that the effort itself decided which ideas were worth building. Emil argues that friction was quietly doing a second job as a filter, and removing it left only the output. That is why so much of what gets shipped now feels like it exists rather than like it was designed. The answer is not to slow down but to apply the judgement on purpose, because nothing else is applying it for you.
View full writingGoes well with
emil-design-eng
The design-engineering house style behind Sonner and Vaul.
Emil's main skill. Mostly animation, with the UI-polish and component judgement that surrounds it: what to build, how far to push it, and when to stop.
npx skills add https://github.com/emilkowalski/skills
prototype
Builds several genuinely different UI variants behind a live picker.
Flip through real implementations instead of arguing about descriptions, then promote the one that wins.
npx skills add https://github.com/emilkowalski/skills --skill prototype
apple-design
Apple's interface and motion principles, translated for the web.
Distilled from the WWDC design talks. Gesture-driven UI, spring physics, interruptible transitions, translucent materials, optical sizing and the restraint underneath all of it.
npx skills add https://github.com/emilkowalski/skills --skill apple-design
Emil Kowalski