{"slug": "i-finally-stopped-designing-and-started-building-maxos", "title": "I Finally Stopped Designing and Started Building MaxOS", "summary": "A developer building MaxOS, an AI-first workspace, shifted focus from designing to coding after spending too much time on UI concepts. The project uses React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Zustand, with a reusable design system and features like a dashboard, AI chat, and agent manager. The developer, a software student, is building in public and plans to add local filesystem access, Monaco Editor, and AI providers next.", "body_md": "A few weeks ago I started sharing my idea for MaxOS, an AI-first workspace that puts AI at the center of the desktop experience instead of treating it like another app.\n\nSince then, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the architecture, generating UI concepts, and planning how everything should work.\n\nAt some point I realized I had a problem.\n\nI was spending way more time designing than actually writing code.\n\nSo I decided to stop chasing the perfect UI and start building the real application.\n\nTurning mockups into a real app\n\nI used Google Stitch to generate a lot of interface ideas. It was honestly a great way to explore layouts and workflows.\n\nThe HTML it generates isn't something I'd want to maintain though.\n\nInstead of trying to clean it up, I used the screens as references and rebuilt everything with React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and reusable components.\n\nThat turned out to be a much better approach.\n\nWhere the project is now\n\nRight now MaxOS has the basic structure it needs to grow.\n\nSo far I've built:\n\nA reusable design system\n\nThe application shell\n\nDashboard\n\nProjects page\n\nCode editor interface\n\nAI chat interface\n\nCommand palette\n\nMemory page\n\nAgent manager\n\nSettings\n\nZustand state management\n\nRouting\n\nMost of it still runs on mock data, and that's completely intentional.\n\nI'd rather spend time building a solid foundation than rush into features I'll have to rewrite later.\n\nWhat's next\n\nNow comes the part I've been looking forward to the most.\n\nThe next milestones are things like:\n\nLocal filesystem access\n\nMonaco Editor\n\nTerminal integration\n\nGit integration\n\nAI providers\n\nContext engine\n\nMemory engine\n\nThis is where MaxOS starts becoming more than just a nice interface.\n\nBuilding in public\n\nI'm still a software development student, so I'm figuring out a lot of this as I go.\n\nThat's also why I'm sharing everything publicly.\n\nI'll probably make mistakes, change my mind, and rewrite parts of the project. That's all part of the process.\n\nIf you've built Electron apps or AI tools before, I'd love to hear your advice.\n\nThanks for following along.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-finally-stopped-designing-and-started-building-maxos", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/maxpaardekam/i-finally-stopped-designing-and-started-building-maxos-18e7", "published_at": "2026-07-23 23:43:47+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-24 00:32:07.333532+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "developer-tools", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["MaxOS", "Google Stitch", "React", "TypeScript", "Tailwind CSS", "Zustand", "Monaco Editor"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-finally-stopped-designing-and-started-building-maxos", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-finally-stopped-designing-and-started-building-maxos.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-finally-stopped-designing-and-started-building-maxos.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-finally-stopped-designing-and-started-building-maxos.jsonld"}}