Tom Krcha founded Pencil.dev after years inside the design tooling cycle, from Flash evangelism to creating Adobe XD, which gives him a rare view of where AI design tools are actually heading.

This conversation covers why agents are best at the first 80%, why designers still need the last 20%, what a headless design tool means, how Pencil is building for swarms of AI designers, and why taste comes from still putting your hands in the work.

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CHAPTERS

• 0:00 Headless agents inside design tools

• 0:31 Why design tools are splitting

• 1:36 Tom’s path from Flash to Pencil

• 5:13 Stochastic vs deterministic design

• 6:16 Why designers still need the chisel

• 9:18 How Pencil started inside Cursor

• 10:19 Designer as orchestrator and final authority

• 12:05 Canvas, tweaker, and headless agents

• 14:16 What “headless design tool” means

• 15:52 Context as the portable briefcase

• 17:09 - Pencil as an agent-first canvas

• 20:53 Building tools that build tools

• 24:52 Why users create 50-artboard files

• 26:26 Agent specialization and subagents

• 27:35 Why vibe coding feels like Flash

• 29:38 Can agents create happy accidents?

• 31:17 The canvas as a crime scene

• 32:28 Does AI make you a better author?

• 35:06 What designers do with 60 agents

• 36:38 Pencil’s roadmap and the future of iteration

• 38:22 Taste comes from participation

LINKS

• Pencil.dev: https://pencil.dev

• Tom Krcha on X: https://x.com/tomkrcha

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• X / Twitter: https://x.com/tommygeoco

• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco