Make AI sketch your GUI as ASCII art before coding, says James Koppel
jimmykoppel · x · 2026-09-24
James Koppel shares a workflow trick for AI coding: describing a GUI in words often leads to badly laid-out screens. Instead, ask the AI to draft the GUI plan as ASCII art — cheap for the AI, and layout disagreements become visible immediately. Real case: building a Command Center feature to port a coding agent session (e.g. Claude Code hitting limits) into Codex required a dialog clearly communicating that porting may fail; detailed prose still produced an off first render, but the ASCII-art plan plus brief feedback nailed it.
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