Design for devtools

Most consumer app design patterns break when applied to developer tools. Developers are expert users with different needs: information density over whitespace, keyboard shortcuts over click targets, customizable layouts over guided flows. We’ve been designing interfaces for this audience since 2006.

What we’ve designed

HTTPie—product design for the API testing client, hitting 4th Product of the Day on Product Hunt. Tines—a drag-and-drop workflow builder for security teams that helped them reach unicorn status. Ghost Security—a noise-free security dashboard that groups and prioritizes events visually instead of burying them in cluttered tables. Tegon—a full UI/UX redesign for this YC-backed AI-first issue tracker. Quotient—a prompt evaluation sandbox for testing LLMs. Rootly—product redesign for a YC-backed incident management platform. Medplum—designing a healthcare developer platform from a demo app.

How we think about developer UX

Developer tools have no “happy path.” Users jump between panels and features based on their current task. We design for three contexts: immediate (debugging a specific error), intermediate (building a feature), and broad (shipping to production). Each demands different layout patterns and information density.

We design with radio buttons over dropdowns, sliders with precise text inputs, resizable panels, and persistent interface states. These patterns are for people who live in their tools eight hours a day—whether that’s a dashboard, a CLI, or an AI-powered interface.

Documentation and onboarding

The first experience with your product isn’t the dashboard—it’s the docs. We design documentation as a product surface: information architecture that matches how developers actually search, code examples that copy-paste cleanly, and onboarding flows that get users to their first success in minutes. For Teleport, we transformed their documentation into a customer acquisition channel with Next.js—docs that don’t just explain the product but sell it.

Design sprints for devtools

Many of our client relationships start with a design sprint: two weeks from first conversation to validated product design. We’ve kicked off engagements this way for Tines, Ghost Security, HTTPie, Tegon, and Quotient. For pre-PMF startups, this is the fastest path from idea to something you can test with real developers.