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How to give agents design taste
I’ve been building waitlist pages for Pailflow to test interest in a few specific jobs that Pailflow can run end-to-end so we can see what actually gets pull. AI makes this kind of work absurdly fast. I can ask for a page, get a structure, tweak the copy, and spin up another direction in minutes.
But it’s no secret that AI-generated work usually has the smell. It sits in a sort of uncanny valley: clearly a website, but not quite something that feels made by a person. The page has the right functional pieces: hero, CTA, cards, proof. But it still feels like the average version of every software page you’ve ever seen.
Agents are trained on much of the public internet. So when you ask an agent for a design, you often get the median.
And it lacks taste.
What is taste?
Taste is a fuzzy word, but I define it as knowing what direction to push in, what to reject, and what feels like you. It is the small decisions that make a page feel specific instead of generic.
When agents make creation cheaper, taste matters more. Everyone can get to “fine” faster. The advantage moves to the person who can look at “fine” and say: no, not that.
More of this. Less of that. This reference, not that one.
How do you cultivate taste?
I think taste starts with consumption. You look at good work on purpose. You ask what makes it work, what makes it shine, and what you would steal from it.
Austin Kleon’s _Steal Like an Artist_ is useful here because it gives language to something creative people already do. Nothing is fully original. Good work builds on what came before it. The point is to notice what you are drawn to, borrow the parts that resonate, and remix them into something that reflects your own point of view.
That is where taste starts to become a muscle. The more good inputs you study, the easier it becomes to tell the difference between what is worth stealing and what is just noise.
Tools to give agents better taste
Taste is context. A sharper set of references gives it something to push toward.
Refero is great for this. It is a collection of high-quality product flows, landing pages, and design references from real products. I used it to find examples that felt closer to the world I wanted Pailflow to live in.
Then I used Impeccable as the critique layer. After the agent produced a draft, Impeccable helped me push on the parts that make a page feel intentional: hierarchy, spacing, copy, motion, restraint, and overall vibe. The useful thing is that it gives you levers. You can ask for quieter, bolder, more animated, more simple, etc.
The later versions are not perfect, but they have less generic software energy.
Initial design (no impeccable or refero)
Variations with refero + impeccable
Conclusion
When the cost of generating a page drops to almost nothing, the hard part is is knowing whether the thing on the screen should exist in that form. Does it feel generic? Does it feel like you? Does it communicate the right world? Does it have a point of view?
If I let the agent drive from the median, I get median work. If I give it better references, sharper constraints, and more honest critique, I can push the work toward something that feels more like me.
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