The Terminal Became My Canvas

What it is — A designer’s account of shifting their primary creative tool from Figma/Illustrator to the terminal, working directly with AI coding agents to build products instead of mockups.

Key points

• Reports building in a day what used to take weeks, crediting the shift from visual tools to text-based, agent-driven work.
• Working in the terminal lets them explore many ideas in parallel instead of committing to one direction early, changing how fast concepts get validated.
• Frames it as a genuine productivity paradox: real gains in speed and output, alongside real drawbacks from leaving familiar visual design tools behind.