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Chef-Planner
2026-01-25 Beta (8 active users)

Devlog #2: Chef-Planner Redesign – A Facelift in 8 Hours

🎯️ The Challenge: A Complete Facelift in One Workday

I set myself a challenge: Give Chef-Planner a complete visual overhaul in just 8 hours. Using Anti Gravity, I wanted to see how much we could achieve in a single focused sprint.

The goal wasn't just to make it pretty, but to demonstrate a new direction quickly using reference screenshots, while keeping the underlying logic intact.

✅ The Process: High Speed & High Efficiency

I am incredibly satisfied with the result. By feeding the AI screenshots of the desired look and feel, we were able to move very fast.

Key Wins:

  • Visual Direction: The AI understood the vibe immediately from the screenshots.
  • Smart Reuse: We didn't reinvent the wheel. Old design components were reused and simply adapted to the new "look," saving massive amounts of time.
  • Performance: I even had time left over to tackle performance issues. The AI quickly analyzed why certain pages were loading slowly and helped implement fixes that improved interaction speeds significantly.

There were only minor hiccups where the AI missed details in deeply nested components, requiring a few nudges to ensure consistency across the board. But overall, it was a smooth ride—until the end.

Dashboard

Before Dashboard Old
After Dashboard New

Planner

Before Planner Old
After Planner New

Recipes List

Before Recipes Old
After Recipes New

Recipe Details

Before Recipe Old
After Recipe New

Editing Forms

Before (Step 1) Form 1 Old
After (Step 1) Form 1 New
Before (Step 2) Form 2 Old
After (Step 2) Form 2 New

Friends List

Before Friends Old
After Friends New

⚠️ The "Dirty End": A Database Disaster

The session ended on a... memorable note.

While working on the deployment, the AI messed up some SQL statements regarding the Next.js Auth tables (Users, Accounts, etc.).

The Result:

  1. My development database was wiped. 😱
  2. Thinking I had fixed it, I ran the migration again... and wiped my production database too. 💀

The Save: Thankfully, I had backups. 😅

After some intense back-and-forth, we managed to clean up the migration files, restore the tables, and successfully deploy the new version. It was a heart-stopping finish to an otherwise productive day.

📈 Takeaways

  • AI is a speed multiplier for UI work, especially when provided with visual references.
  • Always check generated migrations before running them against production. Better, never let AI work on those files.
  • Backups are non-negotiable.

Follow along for more updates on the Chef-Planner journey!