AI Experiment: Career Command Deck

I used Claude to vibecode a dashboard + strategic planning hub. I wanted a tool that would help me see all my thoughts in one place, and I wanted it to be delightful. I love sci-fi, so I set out to develop the tool in the style of a spaceship cockpit.

Here’s the result, a “career command deck.” If you’re on a phone, flip it sideways for a better view.

What you see below is filled with dummy data for a fictional UX designer named Greg Samsa. Poor Greg.

The project took 5 hours to implement, from start to finish. It’s not perfect, but that feels like a feature rather than a bug: it’s good enough.

How do you use AI to support your development?

I’ve been wrestling with this question since large language models (LLMs) hit coaching hard in the summer of 2025. Some observations:

• Remain conscious and deliberate while using AI. Approach an LLM as a tool that you direct, rather than as a comfort or an authority. Focus on strong prompting before diving into problem solving: What is your objective? What role do you want the LLM to play? What style do you want it to take? Watch out for it pulling you away from your life, rather than toward it.

• Re: strong prompting, consider creating a document that lays out who you are, what matters to you, the pitfalls you need to watch out for, and how you want AI to engage with you. Upload that document to your LLM of choice, e.g. in a project, and instruct the AI to refer to that document at the top of every new conversation. I took a four-week program with The Purpose Project about how to create this sort of doc. They call it the “Inner Compass.”

• Exploring a new thought with an LLM can get people out of loops and dead ends. One person compares it to journaling, but in which the journal keeps your thoughts focused and energized. This can be a lot of fun.

• LLMs can vibecode a bespoke system for managing whatever you’re working on, including self care, career planning, or developing influence in your organization. This can also be a lot of fun, and useful.

There’s a lot to be concerned about with AI: runaway energy demand, further concentration of power in the owners of AI systems, job loss, use of AI for surveillance and weapons, and further decay of critical thinking and social fabric akin to the effects of social media. To be honest, I would press Ctrl+Z and revert to a world without LLMs if I could.

However, most of the people I talk with are also clear that if they don’t use AI at all in their career, they will be left behind. I feel this pressure, too.

Everyone has to find their way through this dilemma themselves. For me, the best answer has been to advocate for good AI governance and sustainable energy. The issues are so large that individuals’ consumption habits can’t affect it alone. That said, I also work to limit my use of AI to specific, targeted projects that bring me delight and help me show up more fully in my relationships with people.