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A design tool I built for myself first: layout, vector drawing and motion on one canvas, with my own AI working inside the file. Built over three months, with one restart along the way.
In late June 2026 I wanted a lo-fi tool I could bend to my own way of working. I built the first Solide on GrapesJS in a week, 84 commits from June 26 to July 2, and it worked. Then I audited it: one engine file of 1,179 lines, changed 52 times in 30 days. Every new feature had to squeeze through that one door.
On July 3 I started over. This time the framing, the flows and the UI system came first, and the code came after. That second start is the Solide you see here, and I have since drawn more than 300 Tasmi' screens on it, from rough lo-fi to final hi-fi.
A normal day meant laying out screens in one app, drawing icons in another, and paying for the AI that plugs into each. Every switch cost a little focus, and every plan a little money.
Then came the handoff. Porting Solide's own sidebar from its mockup took four rounds of me spotting mismatches by eye. When I finally automated the check, its first run on a section I had already reviewed three times found 134 mismatches. My eyes were the only test, and they were losing.
How might I draw layout, vectors and motion in one place, let my own AI work inside the file, and know, not hope, that the built screen matches?
My first question was the oldest one in any design tool: what actually draws the canvas? GrapesJS got me running fast, and my own audit showed me what fast had cost.
Next: where should Solide live? I wanted to click an icon and start drawing, offline, in a window of its own. Anyone I share a file with would want a link instead.
The same frontend runs on both through a PlatformAdapter. The browser version has existed since 2026-09-21.
Then the part I cared about most: how can an AI help without guessing? I had watched too many generated drafts land next to my work instead of inside it.
The pen drew corners only. A curve could arrive in an SVG file, but dragging one of its points bent it out of shape, and a circle showed 5 points instead of 4.
So curves became 24 behaviours, A to X, each one drawn on the canvas and approved over four review rounds before I wrote a line of code. Six of them below.
Solide's own interface plays by the same rule. Its panels are split into 126 sections, and each one must pass the design-diff gate against its mockup before a commit goes through. The gate proves the DOM matches the drawing. It does not prove behaviour or accessibility.
Approved before any code. The eighth step is the point of the product: what you drew is what you build from.
