As an indie software maker, I agree. I've been thinking about this a lot too. I'm going to start by polishing my indieweb site first. A site needs to look decent to be trustworthy.
I feel the same. I've always had this feeling about sites, but the recent year or so has really defined it for me: Sites that have the polished, glowing, glossy aesthetic are way less trustworthy to me than simple indieweb sites with some basic CSS. It's the same principle people have noted about seeing typos in text making it more human-like. Of course, Claude can make sites that have an indieweb vibe, but it takes deliberate prompting, while the default is the fancy 2020 SaaS startup aesthetic, which I see everywhere now. It's almost an inversion of felt effort.
Ah, I see. These days, there's a trend of calling everything AI slop, so I agree with you. That's why I've been hesitant to use Bootstrap templates lately. even though they used to be considered pretty reliable
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As an indie software maker, I agree. I've been thinking about this a lot too. I'm going to start by polishing my indieweb site first. A site needs to look decent to be trustworthy.
In 2026 a site should not look made by Claude to feel trustworthy, IMHO
I feel the same. I've always had this feeling about sites, but the recent year or so has really defined it for me: Sites that have the polished, glowing, glossy aesthetic are way less trustworthy to me than simple indieweb sites with some basic CSS. It's the same principle people have noted about seeing typos in text making it more human-like. Of course, Claude can make sites that have an indieweb vibe, but it takes deliberate prompting, while the default is the fancy 2020 SaaS startup aesthetic, which I see everywhere now. It's almost an inversion of felt effort.
Does it look like Claude made it? It was actually made from a template I used 5 years ago. The world never stops surprising me.
It doesn’t, no, I reacted to your comment, not your website :)
Ah, I see. These days, there's a trend of calling everything AI slop, so I agree with you. That's why I've been hesitant to use Bootstrap templates lately. even though they used to be considered pretty reliable