Live Vibe Coding using Others' Ideas

[Anand S]

I spoke today on Design in the Age of Infinite Generativity at the Chennai Design Festival.

You can read about the talk in the link about. This post is about my preparation.

• Tue 10 Mar 2026. Damn! Palani's asked for the topic. Claude, what should I talk about!?
• Fri 20 Mar 2026. ChatGPT, tell me who the other speaker are.
• Fri 20 Mar 2026. Oh, I'll just pull a bunch of links, use browser tabs as slides, create some slide dividers, and I'm ready!
• Sat 21 Mar 2026 1:00 pm. I'm NOT ready! The story doesn't flow. It's rubbish.
• Sat 21 Mar 2026 3:00 pm. Let me drop some of the boring ones. I just have 15 minutes.
• Sat 22 Mar 2026 3:30 pm. Oh, maybe I should listen to what the others are saying, just... you know...

... and that proved the best decision ever, because Senthil of Payir showed a re-usable fabric calendar that converts into a bag. It was a fantastic idea, so I got curious.

• 3:40 pm. Asked Claude for more ideas like Senthil's. It looked fine and I could read it later, but what if... maybe... I presented these ideas!?
• 3:45 pm. Ask Gemini to draw the first idea - a Modular Kolam Mat. The results look fantastic!
  
• 3:50 pm. Now I'm going ga-ga over the idea. I generate images for 3 more ideas: a growth chart kurta, seed library sari border, and recipe towel.
• 4:15 pm. Narendra shares a bunch of cool PsychOps design hacks like:
  • When lights are dimmed people speak softer. So, dimming lights reduces sound levels in noisy offices.
  • Rather than reduce the size of shampoo sachets (which customers and business both hate), include 2 shampoos in one sachet, tearable in the middle.
  • Price saches at 95p with a 5p deposit for the sachet - which rag-pickers can collect and return to the retailer.
• 4:20 pm. Ask Claude for more ideas like Narendra's. The results are just as fantastic!
• 4:30 pm. I now have images for his ideas too. Now, I start deleting my more boring links.

In fact, these ideas ended up being so good that the bulk of my talk was just about ideas derived from their work. (I'm obviously a big fan of plagiarism!)

Despite being one of my shortest talks (~10 min), this worked quite well because people value speed and spontaneity. I was obviously demonstrating these and that felt cool.

For many years, I've been live-coding on stage. But that requires a lot of preparation.

Vibe-coding makes live-coding a lot faster. I can do it during a client demo. I can do it during a talk.

So, I'm going to listen more to what others are saying (in meetings, conferences, etc.) and live-vibe-code from what they just said. Great way to show-off while learning from others!