https://benhof.ai/blog Writing about code, design, and everything in between. en-us Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/designers-are-becoming-technical https://benhof.ai/blog/designers-are-becoming-technical SVGs are coordinates and instructions, not fixed images. LLMs give designers a new way to inspect, manipulate, and animate that underlying system themselves. Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/the-registry-came-from-the-backyard https://benhof.ai/blog/the-registry-came-from-the-backyard Thirteen UI components, extracted from software that ran an actual wiffle ball tournament. On why the best component libraries are byproducts, not products. Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/my-github-said-i-shipped-nothing https://benhof.ai/blog/my-github-said-i-shipped-nothing The contribution graph showed 13. The real number was 16,931. What happened in between says a lot about how building works now. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/carrying-a-university-into-the-big-12 https://benhof.ai/blog/carrying-a-university-into-the-big-12 The conference realignment stories are about TV deals. The actual work is uniforms, signage, data, and a five-city bus tour - a decade-long project disguised as an announcement. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/case-study-gobearcats-os https://benhof.ai/blog/case-study-gobearcats-os Building an AI-native operating system for an athletic department's fan data - Snowflake underneath, one conversational surface on top. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/case-study-uc-hall-of-fame https://benhof.ai/blog/case-study-uc-hall-of-fame Every UC Athletics Hall of Fame inductee since 1976, structured, searchable, and beautiful - built nights-and-weekends with AI tools. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/in-defense-of-over-engineering https://benhof.ai/blog/in-defense-of-over-engineering My wiffle ball tournament has 116 database tables, two environments, and DDoS protection. This is not a confession. It's a method. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/my-second-brain-is-a-folder-of-markdown-files https://benhof.ai/blog/my-second-brain-is-a-folder-of-markdown-files What an LLM-first personal knowledge base actually looks like after a year of daily use - structure, rules, and why the AI writes the notes while I ask the questions. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/starting-a-creative-agency-inside-an-athletic-department https://benhof.ai/blog/starting-a-creative-agency-inside-an-athletic-department We merged three units into The Agency - UC Athletics' in-house creative studio. An Emmy and one College GameDay later, here's what I'd tell anyone building a team inside an institution. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/tournament-day-is-an-operations-center https://benhof.ai/blog/tournament-day-is-an-operations-center Thirteen fields, forty teams, one Saturday: what actually happens when the Schott Classic goes live, and why the software earns its keep between 11:30 AM and the 10:30 PM finals. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/what-298-teams-taught-me-about-edge-cases https://benhof.ai/blog/what-298-teams-taught-me-about-edge-cases Five years of wiffle ball tournaments is the best QA program I've ever run. Real users find everything - and the fix loop is the product. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://benhof.ai/blog/why-my-wiffle-ball-tournament-has-a-payments-platform https://benhof.ai/blog/why-my-wiffle-ball-tournament-has-a-payments-platform The Schott Classic started as a backyard game. Now it has registration, Square payments, waivers, brackets, live scoring, and umpire scheduling. This is either dedication or a diagnosis. Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT