Meta comment: I've been wondering why AI-generated websites/artifacts/reports always have the same "look". It reminds me of Bootstrap (CSS Framework) days when every startup website looked the same.

Are they following some sort of common guideline?

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simonw a day ago | parent | next [-]

In this case they really are, and you can read the guidelines that helped create the site on the site itself in the skills: https://codex-tool-reference.simonw.chatgpt.site/skills/site...

Scroll down to the "Establish the visual direction" section.

	▲	tsunamifury a day ago \| parent [-]
		This can be replaced, you just have to do the work of building a design library yourself and the guidance components. Then building skills around their use.

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Almondsetat a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because most AI generated websites are from people who don't know much and as such cannot even articulate the look they want

	▲	verdverm a day ago \| parent [-]
		aka ns;nt https://blog.kinglycrow.com/no-skill-no-taste/

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adrianwaj 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It can be enraging. Checkout https://tinkeri.ng/ - I just added a layout-switcher "Neubrutalism" at top right. The existing theme is standard fare. Both look alright. I told C3PO to follow the guidelines set at https://neubrutalism.com and lessen the shadows.

I have to say, having a background in doing detailed design work makes it much easier to write the right prompt. Also, having the ability to deliver a theme-switcher like this is very handy. There is a tradeoff. Adding this switching took about 1hr 10mins. Last 10% of the result always the most time-consuming.

Dark/light switching is also important.

If I had built this from the ground up manually, I could implement my own design and fiddle with things on a minute level but this type of granularity gets lost when building at speed.

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left-struck a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I keep seeing comments like this, and having messed around and generated a few (non-public) websites myself they all looked completely different?

Mind you I don’t spend a lot of time on ai generated websites or the kinds of places you might find those. Well except for HN but you get my point.

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newswasboring a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I think these guideline are built into the llms. After all with llms, any decision you don't take will be taken for you. For a so called slop site (Simon's words, not mine :P) I don't think they specified a style so the llm just decided the default it knows. One day I will run experiments (when I can afford it) trying to identify the "taste" of different llms.

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simonw a day ago | parent [-]

I told it "Design aesthetic should be technical docs, minimal flare" - full prompt here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504625#49505116

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verdverm a day ago | parent [-]

nit, the LHS menu does not scroll until I get the the very bottom of the main content, it should scroll independently so I can see the "ToC" in full without having to view the page in full

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simonw a day ago | parent [-]

Thanks, I passed that on to ChatGPT Work, should be fixed now (I'm on mobile so haven't tried it on desktop yet.)

	▲	verdverm 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks Simon! Scroll better now, but something still feels off about the page (to me), perhaps I'm not used to such a large "navbar" area. The "breadcrumb" feels like "false advertising" to me too :]