# Using AI as a Design Engineer

Essay by Jakub Krehel (https://jakub.kr)

How I use AI as a design engineer on a daily basis.

Topics: Craft
Source: https://jakub.kr/work/using-ai-as-a-design-engineer

## For agents

Nothing to install. This is a reference: cite it, or fetch the source when
the reasoning matters.

Read it at: https://jakub.kr/work/using-ai-as-a-design-engineer

The full text is not reproduced here. It belongs to its author. What is
above is the author's own summary and the topics it covers.

Skills in this library that act on the same ground:

- emil-design-eng (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/emil-design-eng): The design-engineering house style behind Sonner and Vaul.
- prototype (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/prototype): Builds several genuinely different UI variants behind a live picker.
- apple-design (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/apple-design): Apple's interface and motion principles, translated for the web.
- better-ui (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/better-ui): Concentric radius, optical alignment, surface depth, hit areas.
- better-interface (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/better-interface): Every better-* skill as a single review pass.

## The short version

A role built on craft has every reason to be sceptical of AI, and Jakub says so before explaining why he uses it daily anyway. Design engineering is largely trial and error, hours spent hunting the moment where something feels right, and AI makes throwing away a wrong concept cheap. The distinction he insists on is that it accelerates the work rather than replacing the thinking, and you have to understand what the agent is doing. Most of the value comes from setup. Short, specific project rules that reference other files, written once and reused everywhere.

## Verification

- Source link: Resolved (HTTP 200) (pass)
- Reading copy: Plain markdown for agents at /md/using-ai-as-a-design-engineer (pass)
- Attribution: Credited to Jakub Krehel (pass)

Full page: https://www.stackskills.dev/library/using-ai-as-a-design-engineer