06/20/2026
A few nights ago, our website builder did something I genuinely didn't expect.
I've spent thirty years building the web, so I don't say that lightly.
For months, the sites our system generated on its own carried a quiet sameness. Good, but you could feel the machine behind them, that faint templated whisper designers call the uncanny valley.
Then, late in a twelve-hour session, I kicked off a build almost on autopilot. When it finished, I stopped. It didn't look like our builder on a good day. It looked like a designer had sat with the brand and actually thought it through.
So we tried to break it. We threw our most absurd test brands at it, and it kept coming back with real, specific design that had genuine intent behind it. The sameness was gone.
I haven't seen output like this from a generator anywhere else yet. I'm not going to plant a flag and call us first at anything. I'll just say we're a little stunned, and we didn't get here alone.
I wrote up the whole story, bridge and fog and all:
https://lucitech.net/blog-crossing-the-uncanny-valley.html
One ridge crossed, not the end of the climb. More to come.
Field notes from the workshop: the night our website builder climbed out of the uncanny valley and started making sites that look like a person actually cared.
