Rewrite Pi for Excel landing page and audit add-in UI/UX
Session from pi-for-excel-sessions on Hugging Face by thomasmustier · MIT · condensed by Coders Talk
Replace the two unused landing pages with a new one aimed at AI power-users, matching the app's design system, then use the same session to audit and file issues on the rest of the add-in's UI/UX (conventions, files workspace, shortcuts, menus, overlays).
- +0Prompt · +0Build a new landing page for AI power-users (Claude Code/Codex users, nontechnical) using our README/install info but not the existing bad landing pages; match app's design system; invoke frontend-design skill and ask questions first.
- +0mAgent did · +0mRead the frontend-design skill, theme tokens, README and install docs, then asked five clarifying questions about scope, screenshots, model naming, OAuth wording and target audience before designing.
- +10mPrompt · +10mAnswered clarifying questions in detail: replace public/index.html, screenshots/icon are placeholders to drop, don't name models, avoid saying 'OAuth', explain the CORS proxy plainly, give separate Mac/Windows instructions.
- +14mAgent did · +14mWrote public/index.html v1 as a single self-contained page matching the app's teal/glass design, then used agent-browser to screenshot desktop and mobile views and polished spacing, icons and terminal formatting.
- +29mPrompt · +29mReframed the value prop: audience is AI power-users who already use coding agents for non-code work; pitch should be 'that power, but native to Excel', with conventions and self-extension as differentiators.
- +30mAgent did · +30mWrote messaging notes to .research/, rebuilt the landing page around the new positioning, then went through many rounds of copy edits (hero line, checkpoints, conventions, footer credit, link colors) before committing and pushing the page live, deleting the old proposed page.
- +1h 27mPrompt · +1h 27mPivot: wants to redesign how formatting conventions work — actual custom Excel format strings per preset, font/color/header defaults, live preview — and asked to think through a clean implementation.
- +1h 27mAgent did · +1h 27mAudited the conventions/store/format-builder/style-resolver code and system prompt integration, then filed GitHub issue #168 with the full data model, UI spec and phased plan for the conventions rebuild (no backward-compat since pre-release).
- +2h 1mAgent did · +2h 1mContinued auditing the rest of the UI on request: files workspace (rename, broken binary download, drop 'Recent activity'), keyboard shortcuts overlay, the '...' utilities menu, input-area controls, and cross-overlay consistency — filing issues #171 through #177 covering menu grouping, MCP/Skills placement, toasts, empty state, a11y and dark mode.
- +2h 24mOutcome · +2h 24mNew landing page shipped and live via two commits/push; session also produced 8 filed GitHub issues (#168, #171–#177) documenting UX/UI debt across conventions, files, shortcuts, menus, overlays and capability taxonomy for later implementation.
Next time I'd front-load the positioning (who this is for, what makes it different from a generic AI chatbot) before asking the agent to build anything, since the whole first landing page draft got mostly replaced once I explained the 'coding agent, but native to Excel' angle. The correction that did the most work was pushing back on jargon and scary-sounding phrasing (OAuth, CORS, 'browsers block this') — the agent had the technical details right but needed repeated nudges to keep the tone like sharing something cool with a friend rather than marketing copy. The later UX audit was genuinely useful as a way to surface a long backlog of small inconsistencies without me having to spot them all myself.