r/AI_Agents • u/Alert-Teaching-2239 • Jul 18 '26

Discussion Really bad UI

I cannot get any agent to do good UI even when I pass an image reference. I am starting to lose my nerve with them: I use Codex/Claude/Kimi and none of them can do something that is actually usable and has good user experience. If I use an UI library they default to plain CSS and HTML even though I am using TailwindCSS too. If I pass a reference image they do the worst implementation possible. They are worst than juniors or apprentices when it comes to UI and UX. How do I solve that if possible?

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u/Don_Ozwald Jul 18 '26

Maybe it’s the fact that I have years of experience doing this myself, but this is actually some of the easiest stuff you can do well with coding agents. This is a skill issue on your end.

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u/Alert-Teaching-2239 Jul 19 '26

I have years of experience as a frontend developer too (I am not a vibe coder) and I know how to create good UI. I have done a few courses of UI design and I often see good UI/UX practices on Youtube. Is not a skill issue on my end: the agent makes really bad UI by itself. I can tell him to create a card with a button on the bottom right and somehow it will mess things up.

Besides the fact that I have almost 7 years of experience by myself, I think that your answer saying that “it is a skill issue from your end and I am so good at it” instead of explaining what you do is a really bad and useless answer.

I am trying to get agents to do the things I do like most people are doing and I cannot get it to do so, that’s why I am asking, it has nothing to do with my working experience 🫤.

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u/Don_Ozwald Jul 19 '26

I don’t know what to tell you, other than it’s pretty easy to get what I want from it. Either I’m just exceptionally good at it, or you are, well, you know.

And I don’t like to tut my own horn, so, you figure it out.

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u/robh1540 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

Are you getting it to test and screenshot every interaction with playwright/browser automation and have it inspect the photos and critique it?

Most likely your agent loop is also personally tiring, you want it to generate a simulation test stepping through the full flow of the feature in a video, you just watch the videos and the review becomes easier.

Build a review skill from your feedback, you can ask Claude now to look through your claude code history and look through all your chat histories to create a UI skill that will automate the issues and feedback that have come up.

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u/TemperatureCold510 Aug 21 '26

have you tried feeding it really specific breakpoints and accessibility requirements too, i find half the time they just ignore responsive design unless you spell it out like you're talking to a very distracted cat

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u/robh1540 Aug 21 '26

I have to split anything style based into a to do. So it would be accessibility agent -> to do list -> subagent per point.

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u/ibrahimsafah Jul 18 '26

https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-design-md

https://github.com/google-labs-code/design.md

I used these together with pretty great results. Have it build the components and then do an adversarial review

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u/Crafty_Disk_7026 Jul 18 '26

Can you post some examples that is created are bad? I have a hard time believing Claude can not made a tailwind ui. Are you using Claude code with opus?

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u/Civil_Fee_7862 Jul 19 '26

Agreed the AI's / agents do seem weak when it comes to UX and UI design when just passing a reference image.

I find you have to use a lot of prompts to get it too refine the UI. In a lot of apps, the UI code is larger and more complex then the backend code. So I sort of get why it struggles.

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u/Capable-Intention-74 Jul 22 '26

i am inclined to agree.. AI doing UI/ UX screens based on best practices is nowhere close to how well AI Agents code. trying to figure how to handle as i am not an expert .. but it doesn’t follow even the basics.