You don't write code. You describe, review, and react — like working with a designer who never sleeps. Two habits make the loop fast:
Ask for options, not revisions, on matters of taste
Font not right? Don't say "try another" ten times — say "show me a lineup." Ours: eight fonts side by side → three finalists → a full sample homepage for each. One look, one decision, done.
Describe symptoms in plain words — screenshots beat everything
The most efficient bug report of the entire build was a screenshot plus one sentence: "there's white space on the right." No technical vocabulary needed — "our faces are cut off" and "it looks crooked on my phone" are perfect bug reports.
Real mistake from our build
The first design used emojis as icons — and the owner called it out immediately: "emojis look so AI-written." She was right. The fix was a set of custom-drawn line icons in the brand colors, and the whole site instantly looked designed instead of generated.
The lesson: if something about your site pattern-matches to "made by a robot," say so bluntly. Generic icons, stock-sounding copy, too many exclamation points — all fixable in one request.
Real mistake from our build (a funny one)
The site has a small animated sparkle effect. Getting it right took four rounds, and at one point the owner's honest review was that the mist trailing the flying sparkle looked like, well, flatulence. That review — blunt, visual, specific — got it fixed in one more pass, where three polite vague notes hadn't.
The lesson: iteration is normal, not failure. Say what it looks like to you, however silly. "Slower and feathery" and "spread wider as it floats" are excellent design direction.
You handle
- Taste calls: fonts, photos, tone, what feels like you
- Reviewing every page like a picky customer would
- Facts only you know: prices, policies, how you work
Hand to Claude
- All design and code, logo drawing, photo cropping and optimizing
- Font and layout lineups so you choose instead of describe
- Converting phone photos (HEIC) and sizing them for web and social