Personal Tool 2026

Mirror

Overview

How can designing with AI travel beyond the laptop?

Mirror is an iPhone app I designed that sends the HTML prototypes an AI agent creates straight to my phone, so I can review and try them out without going back to my laptop.

Problem

The prompt traveled. The design didn’t.

Prompting from my phone was easy. Seeing the result wasn’t: files could lose their styles on the way, and the latest output was always a few steps away.

Solution

A visual inbox for the things your agents build.

Each output arrives as a compact notification in one feed and unfolds only as far as you need, from a quick glance to the full interactive prototype, with its styles and assets intact.

Process

Simplify the interface, then make it reliable.

01

Explore in HTML, build in SwiftUI

Apple's notification patterns and the open-source Buzz app shaped the compact feed. I explored card layouts and reveal animations in HTML first, then built the strongest directions in SwiftUI.

Before

After

02

Three destinations became one feed

I began with Sessions, Prototypes, and Gallery. A single feed brought incoming outputs and their previews together, leaving one clear next step.

03

Phone testing broke the happy path

Previews worked only for the newest output, and missing assets left some designs unstyled. Publishing now keeps supporting files and renders every retained output on its own.

04

Pairing without a bridge

Long tokens became six-digit pairing codes. Cloud publishing removed the need for a local bridge, though the agent workflow still has to publish each output.

Reflection

Now the design travels too.