Two days to build what used to take months
This week was a real eye opener for me.
I talk a lot about AI and how powerful it can be. But even I was shocked by what happened over the last few days.
I’m consulting for a company that has two separate codebases for their app. One native iOS. One native Android. Maintaining both is expensive and slow. Every feature has to be built twice. Every bug fixed twice. I’ve been encouraging them to move away from the old ways of working. I saw how long things were taking and knew it could go much faster with modern approaches.
We decided to migrate to Flutter so they could have one codebase that runs everywhere. To give the project a solid foundation, I started by building a complete design system in Flutter using Widgetbook. What happened next still feels unreal.
The speed was almost instant
The iterations were so fast it felt like magic. Adding buttons. Adding colors. Semantic color tokens. Input fields. Tab navigation. Dividers. Images. Illustrations. Even animated illustrations built directly in code.
All of this using Claude Code and Opus.
I think it took about two days to build the entire design system. That includes several test views and running everything in the simulator on my Mac and on my phone.
Two days.
What used to take months. What used to require a team. And honestly, I think the quality is higher than what most teams produce.
Everything a design system needs
This wasn’t a quick prototype or a half-finished experiment. The design system includes:
- Complete component library
- Dark theme support
- Skeleton loaders for loading states
- Haptic feedback patterns
- Automated tests
- Responsive layouts
- Accessibility support
Every component is documented. Every variant is covered. It’s production ready.
Here’s what makes this feel so different. Half a year ago, this is how I would have worked: design everything in Figma first, then hand it off to developers, then review the implementation, then go back to Figma to fix issues, then hand off again. Back and forth. For weeks or months.
Now I skip Figma entirely. I build directly in code. The difference is night and day. When you build in code, you’re not creating pictures of components. You’re creating the actual thing. The feedback loop is immediate. No handoff. No translation. No “this looks different from the design” conversations.
What comes next
The next step is integrating this design system into the existing native apps. We’ll replace components ship of Theseus style. One piece at a time. Until the whole app is Flutter.
Management expects this migration to take a year.
I really think it can be done in a fraction of that time. And not just faster. Better. The user experience will improve significantly along the way.
This changes everything
This is the new way of working when it comes to product, design, and development.
But I’d be lying if I said it’s all positive. The company I’m consulting for has a pretty big team. Designers, developers, project managers. Good people doing good work. And I can’t stop thinking about what this means for them and everyone else working with development and products.
If one person can now do in two days what used to take a team months, what happens to the team? I don’t have a good answer yet. Maybe they focus on different things. Maybe fewer people do more. Maybe the roles change completely.
What I do know is that the old way of working is already outdated. Building products is getting easier every month. The technical barriers are falling fast. For startups, what was once the biggest cost is becoming the easiest part.
The question isn’t whether this will change how companies build teams. It already is. The companies that figure this out first will move faster than anyone thought possible. But faster isn’t always better for everyone involved.
I’m still processing what happened this week. Two days. A complete design system. Tests, themes, animations, haptics, everything.
If you’re building software and you’re not using AI tools yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.
