I think the concern here is a bit of a nothing burger. Everytime a tool comes out thar does design that is all you will see for a while. Think about cliparts impact on pta flyers for example. Also...
I think the concern here is a bit of a nothing burger. Everytime a tool comes out thar does design that is all you will see for a while. Think about cliparts impact on pta flyers for example. Also just the way the web has evolved such that you can classify designs by the decade, early Netscape navigator, the geocities free page look, the web ring look, then you start to see table layouts with contents down the left, then you hit WordPress era and the blog layout arrives, then cms managers get here and every software company has the same (which I personally hate ) layout for their product, and now we have Claude layouts with top cards and whatever else.
The nice thing about Claude though is you can just ask it to change it around. I've found though for one off web front ends it's super nice vs needing to think at all about making it interesting, generally im after functional myself.
I used Claude to improve the look of my site and I now regret it. At the time I was impressed with the results, but now I see patterns repeating across multiple sites. I worry that somebody will...
I used Claude to improve the look of my site and I now regret it. At the time I was impressed with the results, but now I see patterns repeating across multiple sites. I worry that somebody will come across my site and disregard it as AI slop even though I still manually wrote it from scratch.
I could go back to the old design, but the ironic thing is that my old design, with several hours of decision making, is not to far off from the current one. It had rounded corners, and simple line dividers. Most of what Claude did was help me find a better font pairing and generate a better color palette. I've decided to keep it as it is for now, try to improve my own design skills, and create something better in the future.
As somebody else said in this thread, it's not too different from when Bootstrap was popular and every other site had the default Bootstrap look. But the same way LLMs are more effective when a seasoned programmer writes a guide that directs them toward the correct output. They're also more effective when a seasoned designer sits down to write the style guide. And on the other end of the spectrum, the same way it's not enough to tell an LLM to just build an app without proper guidance or oversight, it's not enough to tell it to come up with an original design. It'll still make mistakes, some things will look odd. I can definitely tell when a developer didn't even try to fix a Claude generated UI, because —at least for me— all those small visual oddities accumulate the same way bad code does.
Have you tried one of the currently-hot “de-slopify” skills yet to see what they have to say (or change) about your design? Maybe it’s not as bad as you thought (I’ve found after spending some...
Have you tried one of the currently-hot “de-slopify” skills yet to see what they have to say (or change) about your design? Maybe it’s not as bad as you thought (I’ve found after spending some time with a design or other thing like that, familiarity can have an effect on your own internal impression, both positive and negative, and then when you show it to others, all those details aren’t ever even noticed). And if it is, they ought to be able to tell what to change in order to make it less generic, too.
There is something ironic about using specific AI skills to “de-slopify” something created by AI in the first place. Even more so as both websites really do scream "look, startup! Probably AI!" to...
There is something ironic about using specific AI skills to “de-slopify” something created by AI in the first place. Even more so as both websites really do scream "look, startup! Probably AI!" to me in their designs. Maybe not AI designed, or at least not as obviously AI designed. But, still not very inspired or unique to me either.
While I agree that it’s pretty ironic, it might be useful for some handwritten sites, too? Impeccable apparently has a slop detector tool you can just point at any site you develop on, and the...
While I agree that it’s pretty ironic, it might be useful for some handwritten sites, too?
Impeccable apparently has a slop detector tool you can just point at any site you develop on, and the ruleset looking for “overused”/cliché styling would be applied just the same.
Hell, it’s probably even a decent way of learning some jargon if you’re very new to it, if nothing else.
It might detect some bad general patterns. But, there are better tools out there imho to look at things like contrast, accessibility, etc, etc.* Most of them can be used without needing to apply...
it might be useful for some handwritten sites, too?
It might detect some bad general patterns. But, there are better tools out there imho to look at things like contrast, accessibility, etc, etc.* Most of them can be used without needing to apply them to an agentic flow, this tool cannot. There doesn't seem to be a good reason why it can't be a standalone tool either, as it seems to be a script that gets baked in looking at the examples.
and the ruleset looking for “overused”/cliché styling would be applied just the same.
Again, impeccable specifically screams "AI related" to me. Not necessarily AI generated but certainly not inspired either. If we are talking about overused/cliché styling:
The tiny (too tiny imho) monospace font for menus
Weird font mixing
"Look we are opensource and popular!" github star counter in the menu.
Vague testimonials papered on the lading page.
Vague headlines for items on the landing page that make me question my sanity. "The language" very much feels like an LLM suggested headline.
Just a lot of general platitudes dropped in "Ready to drop in", "Respects your design system", "Real product context", "worlds on the table", "The pre-ship gauntlet.".
Sharp one pixel borders used randomly. Sometimes just around elements, sometimes on hove. No consistent UX to be found here.
It just isn't a tool that inspires confidence.
* Some of the tools I mean:
Chrome comes with "lighthouse" in the developer tools. Which will audit for performance and accessibility. To be fair impeccable scored fairly well there, but ironically as their examples talk about contrast this is one of the areas it failed on.
Various browser extensions are also available to check on things like accessibility.
Not a tool, but for good measure I am throwing this old comment of mine in there as well which has a focus on readability and also links to various resources.
Finally, I know I have focused on accessibility a lot while the tool you link also makes claim about general clichés. But for that there are also better tools available imho. Which is websites like Tildes if it is for personal websites and when talking about companies actually doing user research and feedback on designs.
Edit: Just want to clarify. I don't mind the usage of AI, certainly not for scaffolding. But letting AI design and then other AI fix that design is just a recipe for the most generic cookie cutter stuff out there. It might not be technically slop, but certainly not inspiring either, to me anyway. Given that the question was asked in the context of a personal website I even it is more important to take a step back at times and consider where you as the human are going to make the calls.
I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't see it as the real solution. I'm not a designer, I basically did the equivalent of copying snippets from Stackoverflow to come with an original design,...
I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't see it as the real solution.
I'm not a designer, I basically did the equivalent of copying snippets from Stackoverflow to come with an original design, without a proper understanding of why they worked together. I was worried the result looked amateurish so I used AI to improve it, and now I'm worried it looks AI generated. The solution it not to continue using AI to fumble my way into something that looks good, but to develop my own design skills and refine the ideas in my original concept.
I run a site where all of the CSS came from Claude Design. Most of the rest of the code is hand-written. But I have had two people (both younger, maybe 20?) can it slop. I asked them to give...
I run a site where all of the CSS came from Claude Design. Most of the rest of the code is hand-written. But I have had two people (both younger, maybe 20?) can it slop. I asked them to give specific actionable feedback and they shut up real quick.
I took a quick look at your site, looks fine to me. Very few spots of obvious vibe coded tells. Re overall AI design - I think its one of the few things that can tell you if a human has actually...
I took a quick look at your site, looks fine to me. Very few spots of obvious vibe coded tells.
Re overall AI design - I think its one of the few things that can tell you if a human has actually put effort into a site, especially a simple one with simple backend. I hope AI never gets good at design but I guess if it does I do hope humans design it a lot better. For my forum (see profile if interested), I spent probably equal amount of time thinking about UX vs. how to scale the real-time backend because it matters. The average user won't really care but that doesn't bother me cuz its a passion project.
These days, at least on Reddit, bad UI/UX is honestly everywhere. Most vibe coded projects only work on happy path, some slight edge case and its pretty broken or its completely obvious to the user that edge cases and negative states are completely not considered. On a positive note, it would seem like even regular consumers are very much vigilant on AI design slop now.
Other articles related to this https://www.adriankrebs.ch/blog/design-slop/ https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/ai-aesthetic/ To be honest, AI designed stuff really does fall under a lot of the...
To be honest, AI designed stuff really does fall under a lot of the stuff corporate/product websites have been moving towards for the past decade or so. Startups and a lot of open source projects with monetizing ambitions (I guess also startups, though not always with VC money) have had the same uninspired layout for years now.
I really do thank you for bringing those two articles to light—both of them gave a great deal of clarity on the matter. Your observation that this has been in the making for a decade is exactly...
I really do thank you for bringing those two articles to light—both of them gave a great deal of clarity on the matter. Your observation that this has been in the making for a decade is exactly right. We had already stripped the soul out of web interfaces by using standard SaaS templates long before generative tools appeared. Since it now takes just ten seconds to produce a generic and refined UI with a prompt, perhaps this might lead to a shift back in favour of odd, specially designed human interfaces.
Meh I'm not sure about taking over the internet, rather I think it just makes current top apps better cuz most AI vibe coded apps suck and they're immediately called out for slop. I know there are...
Meh I'm not sure about taking over the internet, rather I think it just makes current top apps better cuz most AI vibe coded apps suck and they're immediately called out for slop. I know there are decent apps out there that are AI assisted but I don't see anyone even promoting them. The only apps I see promoted are vibe coded apps by their own founders ugh.
Ironically, hopefully this eventually creates a higher bar for better designed and uniquely designed apps.
I think the concern here is a bit of a nothing burger. Everytime a tool comes out thar does design that is all you will see for a while. Think about cliparts impact on pta flyers for example. Also just the way the web has evolved such that you can classify designs by the decade, early Netscape navigator, the geocities free page look, the web ring look, then you start to see table layouts with contents down the left, then you hit WordPress era and the blog layout arrives, then cms managers get here and every software company has the same (which I personally hate ) layout for their product, and now we have Claude layouts with top cards and whatever else.
The nice thing about Claude though is you can just ask it to change it around. I've found though for one off web front ends it's super nice vs needing to think at all about making it interesting, generally im after functional myself.
Ai is trained on our stuff, its really just a reflection of the most basic form of us.
It's wild that this doesn't have any images or screenshots
I know right? I felt like a blind mouse trying to understand an elephant while reading this article
I used Claude to improve the look of my site and I now regret it. At the time I was impressed with the results, but now I see patterns repeating across multiple sites. I worry that somebody will come across my site and disregard it as AI slop even though I still manually wrote it from scratch.
I could go back to the old design, but the ironic thing is that my old design, with several hours of decision making, is not to far off from the current one. It had rounded corners, and simple line dividers. Most of what Claude did was help me find a better font pairing and generate a better color palette. I've decided to keep it as it is for now, try to improve my own design skills, and create something better in the future.
As somebody else said in this thread, it's not too different from when Bootstrap was popular and every other site had the default Bootstrap look. But the same way LLMs are more effective when a seasoned programmer writes a guide that directs them toward the correct output. They're also more effective when a seasoned designer sits down to write the style guide. And on the other end of the spectrum, the same way it's not enough to tell an LLM to just build an app without proper guidance or oversight, it's not enough to tell it to come up with an original design. It'll still make mistakes, some things will look odd. I can definitely tell when a developer didn't even try to fix a Claude generated UI, because —at least for me— all those small visual oddities accumulate the same way bad code does.
Have you tried one of the currently-hot “de-slopify” skills yet to see what they have to say (or change) about your design? Maybe it’s not as bad as you thought (I’ve found after spending some time with a design or other thing like that, familiarity can have an effect on your own internal impression, both positive and negative, and then when you show it to others, all those details aren’t ever even noticed). And if it is, they ought to be able to tell what to change in order to make it less generic, too.
Some currently popular tools for this seem to be the taste skill and impeccable.
There is something ironic about using specific AI skills to “de-slopify” something created by AI in the first place. Even more so as both websites really do scream "look, startup! Probably AI!" to me in their designs. Maybe not AI designed, or at least not as obviously AI designed. But, still not very inspired or unique to me either.
While I agree that it’s pretty ironic, it might be useful for some handwritten sites, too?
Impeccable apparently has a slop detector tool you can just point at any site you develop on, and the ruleset looking for “overused”/cliché styling would be applied just the same.
Hell, it’s probably even a decent way of learning some jargon if you’re very new to it, if nothing else.
It might detect some bad general patterns. But, there are better tools out there imho to look at things like contrast, accessibility, etc, etc.* Most of them can be used without needing to apply them to an agentic flow, this tool cannot. There doesn't seem to be a good reason why it can't be a standalone tool either, as it seems to be a script that gets baked in looking at the examples.
Again, impeccable specifically screams "AI related" to me. Not necessarily AI generated but certainly not inspired either. If we are talking about overused/cliché styling:
The tiny (too tiny imho) monospace font for menus
Weird font mixing
"Look we are opensource and popular!" github star counter in the menu.
Vague testimonials papered on the lading page.
Vague headlines for items on the landing page that make me question my sanity. "The language" very much feels like an LLM suggested headline.
Just a lot of general platitudes dropped in "Ready to drop in", "Respects your design system", "Real product context", "worlds on the table", "The pre-ship gauntlet.".
Sharp one pixel borders used randomly. Sometimes just around elements, sometimes on hove. No consistent UX to be found here.
It just isn't a tool that inspires confidence.
* Some of the tools I mean:
Edit: Just want to clarify. I don't mind the usage of AI, certainly not for scaffolding. But letting AI design and then other AI fix that design is just a recipe for the most generic cookie cutter stuff out there. It might not be technically slop, but certainly not inspiring either, to me anyway. Given that the question was asked in the context of a personal website I even it is more important to take a step back at times and consider where you as the human are going to make the calls.
I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't see it as the real solution.
I'm not a designer, I basically did the equivalent of copying snippets from Stackoverflow to come with an original design, without a proper understanding of why they worked together. I was worried the result looked amateurish so I used AI to improve it, and now I'm worried it looks AI generated. The solution it not to continue using AI to fumble my way into something that looks good, but to develop my own design skills and refine the ideas in my original concept.
I run a site where all of the CSS came from Claude Design. Most of the rest of the code is hand-written. But I have had two people (both younger, maybe 20?) can it slop. I asked them to give specific actionable feedback and they shut up real quick.
I took a quick look at your site, looks fine to me. Very few spots of obvious vibe coded tells.
Re overall AI design - I think its one of the few things that can tell you if a human has actually put effort into a site, especially a simple one with simple backend. I hope AI never gets good at design but I guess if it does I do hope humans design it a lot better. For my forum (see profile if interested), I spent probably equal amount of time thinking about UX vs. how to scale the real-time backend because it matters. The average user won't really care but that doesn't bother me cuz its a passion project.
These days, at least on Reddit, bad UI/UX is honestly everywhere. Most vibe coded projects only work on happy path, some slight edge case and its pretty broken or its completely obvious to the user that edge cases and negative states are completely not considered. On a positive note, it would seem like even regular consumers are very much vigilant on AI design slop now.
Archive link
Other articles related to this
https://www.adriankrebs.ch/blog/design-slop/
https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/ai-aesthetic/
To be honest, AI designed stuff really does fall under a lot of the stuff corporate/product websites have been moving towards for the past decade or so. Startups and a lot of open source projects with monetizing ambitions (I guess also startups, though not always with VC money) have had the same uninspired layout for years now.
I really do thank you for bringing those two articles to light—both of them gave a great deal of clarity on the matter. Your observation that this has been in the making for a decade is exactly right. We had already stripped the soul out of web interfaces by using standard SaaS templates long before generative tools appeared. Since it now takes just ten seconds to produce a generic and refined UI with a prompt, perhaps this might lead to a shift back in favour of odd, specially designed human interfaces.
Meh I'm not sure about taking over the internet, rather I think it just makes current top apps better cuz most AI vibe coded apps suck and they're immediately called out for slop. I know there are decent apps out there that are AI assisted but I don't see anyone even promoting them. The only apps I see promoted are vibe coded apps by their own founders ugh.
Ironically, hopefully this eventually creates a higher bar for better designed and uniquely designed apps.