People. Process. Product.
Design for the agentic era.
The Homer Car Everyone Is Building
There's a Simpsons episode where Homer gets to design his own car. AI is now delivering tens of thousands of Homer cars a day.
There's a Simpsons episode where Homer gets to design his own car. His brother Herb runs an auto company and gives Homer total creative control. Engineers indulge every request: bubble dome, three horns that play La Cucaracha…
The result bankrupts the company. Nobody wants one. But Homer is exceptionally proud of it, because he made it.
AI is now delivering tens of thousands of Homer cars a day. Each one unique. Each owner beaming.
Look what I built!
It is exceptionally impressive! Someone who's never built a car before just rolled one off the assembly line.
What happens when it breaks down? The owner pops the hood and finds a rats' nest of wiring that they never even considered during implementation.
What happens when the requirements change? The Homer car wasn't built for any of that. It was built for the thrill of the first drive.
Welcome to the current state of vibe coding.
We're in the joy-ride phase. La Cucaracha blasting, wind in your hair. What comes next is hundreds of thousands of Homer cars, hoods up, hazard lights on, owners on the side of the road wondering what went wrong.
The Future of Inference Is Italic
Conventions don't spread until they have a name.
We're heading into a future of hybrid documents. Part human, part machine. You write the brief, the AI fills in the research. You confirm the diagnosis, the model suggests the treatment. This is already happening at scale. There's no convention for telling the two apart.
The obvious move is icons. Little robot emoji next to AI stuff, checkmarks next to human stuff. But a dense report covered in those badges is visually noisy.
So here's the pattern: inference italics.
Inferred content goes italic. Confirmed content stays roman. That's it. It works because italics already carry the right connotation: aside, different voice, not quite the main speaker.
They're the web's most underused typographic tool! Bold does all the heavy lifting while italics just sit there. This gives them a proper job. Here's the bonus: the <i> tag in HTML5 means "alternate voice or mood." That's literally this use case! The infrastructure already exists.
Is it perfect? No. Screen readers need a fallback. Humans might want italics for emphasis. The bigger point is we need something, and the simplest signal usually wins. Conventions don't spread until they have a name.
I'm calling it inference italics.
Do You Say Please to the Robot?
I do. Not all the time, but enough of the time.
Take my 1 question survey to let me know!
I do. Not all the time, but enough of the time.
Full Churrasco Night
The complete Brazilian barbecue spread. Grilled picanha with chimichurri, vinagrete, garlic rice, black beans, panko farofa, and grilled pineapple. A full churrascaria at home.
The complete Brazilian barbecue spread. Grilled picanha with chimichurri, vinagrete, garlic rice, black beans, panko farofa, and grilled pineapple. A full churrascaria at home.