Glide / 2022–26

Automations for no-code business apps, then an AI builder that shows a mockup before it builds.

My part: Early employee bringing structure to product development, growing into product and strategy. Identified automation as the opportunity, led the initiative and designed Workflows myself, then the AI builder’s conversation model and mockup step. Over several years, kept the company focused on the customers it served best when other segments looked tempting.
What shipped: Workflows, in 2024: automations customers rarely switch off, which substantially increased the consumption of updates, the metered currency sold on top of the subscription.

Workflows

Sophisticated automation that is easy to understand: one sequence read top to bottom, with the workflow’s health on the same screen as its logic. We explored the options in Figma. Some stakeholders favoured more complex ideas, and we took them as far as mocks and prototypes, which we tested with users without strong positive signals. The one I thought was simplest to understand is the one that got built, and it got the results.

Glide Workflows scheduling: the frequency presets, hourly, daily, weekly and monthly forms, a list of the next runs, and the custom schedule — Presets cover most schedules, Custom covers the rest, and the next run is always on screen.

The Workflows launch video.

Then AI

For three years Glide tried, every year or so, to ship an AI builder on the latest models. Every attempt felt like starting from scratch, but the team was gradually becoming expert on the interaction model. In 2025 it went all the way: the previous no-code platform was abandoned in favour of a re-platforming, the product that became GlideOS. Two parts of that were mine: what the agent asks, proposes and decides on its own, and the mockup to look over before anything is built.

When the agent needs a decision, it asks with a widget that takes one tap to answer, and there is always room to type something else instead.

A single-select question in the agent chat — Single select.

A multi-select question in the agent chat — Multi select.

A yes-or-no question in the agent chat — Yes or no.

The final prompt: Build it, or ask for changes — Build it, or ask for changes.

Glide’s AI builder: the chat on the left, the app mockup on the right — A mockup before the build: a wrong mockup costs almost nothing, a wrong app doesn’t.

The GlideOS launch video.

What the AI work did to the way I work is in Faster and deeper with AI.

Design Systems

We rebuilt the builder twice, and each version had its own design system, made of tokens, components and patterns. The apps the builder generated had one too, and that one had to be themeable: colour, containers and spacing change with the kind of app. Besides the branding, a mobile app might need to be dense, an app on a screen in a warehouse less so.

Figma variables: Glide’s colour tokens for text, border and background, in light and dark — Colour tokens of the latest Glide design system, in light and dark.