I m restyling a live app screen by screen, with Claude Code doing the edits. My test suite has 262 tests and all of them pass, but none of them check how a page looks. So a change to shared styles could break a screen and nothing would tell me.
Before each change, I have the agent screenshot every screen I m not supposed to touch, using a fake signed-in session and mocked API responses so no real data is involved. After the change, it captures them again and compares them pixel by pixel. Anything that differs has to be explained.
That caught something I would never have seen. 34 screens matched exactly. One modal didn t: 1,334 of about 215,000 pixels were different. To my eye, before and after looked identical. The cause was that my first version moved the page into a new wrapper, and the old container had been quietly centering the modal s heading. The new one didn t. No test would have complained.
It also showed that a modal kept outside the new wrapper still changed colour, because my theme variables are set on the whole page, not just the wrapper. I had to re-scope the old colours around the modal.
Do you have a particular WHY or reason for your side projects? If not, how are you personally staying disciplined, motivated, and focused on achieving your side project-related goals?
I have a confession. I'm a Petroleum Engineering major who's in love with marketing. Sometimes, I think I'm too in over my head. I started doing "marketing" with social media management as my first foray into anything remotely associated with digital marketing (show of hands if you started the popular way). And then, I think I lost a bit of love for social media marketing, and moved on quickly to something shiny email marketing. This was heaven while it lasted. I sold personal financial management courses and eBooks for a popular consultant here in my country. The conversations in the inboxes were so direct and personal that it always felt like I was looking directly at, and talking to the person's soul. I also tried my hands on SEO and content strategy. Doesn't it just feel amazing how you pick up so many useful micro-skills for digital marketing? That's always so intriguing. Now, I do product marketing, thanks to charting newer territories. I find it intriguing how numerous teams work together to solve a problem. Be that small-scale, or global. And meeting a lot of amazing makers and marketers here launching really helpful products here daily (some of which have been time-savers for me) reinforced my reason why I want to identify with this industry. I read a book recently by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares called, "Traction." Recommended by a senior colleague in marketing. The ideas in the book just made so much sense and held so many insights for me. And it made me understand one thing, "whatever you want to get better at, reading books help you navigate there faster." As a marketer, what book(s) gave you your best "aha!" moment?
