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🧐 Fast code isn't the bottleneck anymore. Judgment is.

March 18, 2026

Ship Better Interfaces

Build interfaces that stay clear when real users and real constraints show up.

Make better calls, faster. Curated reads every Wednesday, each one you can take straight into your work. Five minutes in, you know what to try next, solo or with your team.

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Hey 👋

Bottlenecks in a lot of projects right now isn't the code anymore...

Here are my three picks on what to do with that: service architecture before the screen, how to read a stall, and what to write down before you close.

Enjoy 🦄 - Adam at Unicorn Club.

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The three picks I'd send to a teammate:

Build: Mapping APIs vs. Creating Screens before any UI work starts.

Shape: When a project slows, check whether it's build or alignment first.

Ship: Log "Trade-off" and a "Watch" before closing every project.

Top 3 this week 👇

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Build: Re-writing Tapestry for AI workflows  ↗

Change the architecture before you change the UI.

Why: Rebuilt a personalised CRM services-first when it turned out nobody actually wanted another app to log into.

Adopt: Map what's an API and what needs a screen before touching the UI on an AI-integrated build.

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Shape: Software is a coordination problem. AI can't help you with that.  ↗

Faster execution in the wrong direction is still the wrong direction.

Why: AI speeds up execution. But if the team isn't pointing the same direction, that speed just burns more runway.

Adopt: When a project slows down, check whether it's a build problem or an alignment problem with your team first.

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Ship: Judgment and creativity are all you need.  ↗

Cheap execution shifts the bottleneck to your decisions.

Why: When agents do the implementing, your team's time shifts to design decisions and review, which is where quality lives now.

Adopt: Two lines I add to every project close: Trade-off: [what I gave up] / Watch: [what this enables or breaks].

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Let's make the newsletter even better  ↗

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Dive into more

Shape: When Using AI Leads to "Brain Fry"  ↗ — A study on which AI use patterns cause cognitive fatigue vs. which ones reduce burnout.

Shape: Workshops are for making things  ↗ — Give participants something to build in your next workshop and decisions get made that talk-only formats can't force.

Build: Forward deployed designer  ↗ — With AI build tools, designers can now research, prototype and validate before engineering gets involved.

Build: Zero-JS tooltips and menus  ↗ — Popover API plus anchor positioning gives you light-dismiss overlays and top-layer rendering with no JavaScript.

Build: Moving From Moment.js To The JS Temporal API  ↗ — Temporal reached Stage 4 and is shipping in Chrome 144+ and Firefox 139+, migration guide with real code included.

Useful Extras

Shape: Dancing With Problems  ↗ — John Cutler on moving from vague problem statements to layered hypotheses with actual diagnostic value.

Build: Abusing Customizable Selects  ↗ — The new customizable select element, what it can do now, and where browser support is landing.

Support the newsletter

If this was useful, here are two small ways to help it travel:

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Adam Marsden at Unicorn Club

Thanks for reading

Adam from Unicorn Club

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Curated by Adam Marsden