Behind the Craft
Behind the Craft
Peter Yang
Full Tutorial: Design to Code in 45 Min with Cursor's Head of Design | Ryo Lu
45 minutes Posted Nov 16, 2025 at 2:00 pm.
As the head of design at Cursor, Ryo is at the cutting edge of designers who ship code instead of mocks. He showed me how he built a retro OS with AI and did a live demo of adding a new feature using Cursor’s new agent mode. We also covered how to avoid AI design slop and how the Cursor team reached $29B valuation without full-time PMs.Ryo and I talked about:
Why designers should go directly to code
Building a retro calculator app in one shot with plan mode
How Ryo manages multiple AI agents at once in Cursor
How Cursor builds without PMs and who does the PM work instead
How to avoid creating purple AI design slop (it’s not prompting)
Inside RyOS: A beautiful retro operating system built with AI
How to turn vague ideas into detailed specs with Cursor
0:00
45:47
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Show notes
As the head of design at Cursor, Ryo is at the cutting edge of designers who ship code instead of mocks. He showed me how he built a retro OS with AI and did a live demo of adding a new feature using Cursor’s new agent mode. We also covered how to avoid AI design slop and how the Cursor team reached $29B valuation without full-time PMs.Ryo and I talked about:(00:00) Why designers should go directly to code(02:06) Building a retro calculator app in one shot with plan mode(08:04) How Ryo manages multiple AI agents at once in Cursor(15:18) How Cursor builds without PMs and who does the PM work instead(16:43) How to avoid creating purple AI design slop (it’s not prompting)(20:01) Inside RyOS: A beautiful retro operating system built with AI(30:22) How to turn vague ideas into detailed specs with Cursor(37:47) The fastest way for PMs and designers to learn CursorThanks to our sponsors:Reforge: AI prototyping tool for product builders - https://reforge.com/peterLinear: The best platform for AI agents - https://linear.app/partners/behind-the-craftGet the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/design-to-code-with-cursor-head-of-design-ryo-luWhere to find Rio:X: https://x.com/ryolu_Website: https://ryo.lu/📌 Subscribe to this channel – more interviews coming soon!