--- title: I Let AI Refactor Everything — Here's What Happened description: The new theme engine is in. The design token system is designed. Now comes the part no one wants to do manually — ripping out every legacy dynamic resource... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/i-let-ai-refactor-everything-here-s-what-happened-dhihs2wox twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: I Let AI Refactor Everything — Here's What Happened | daily.dev og:description: The new theme engine is in. The design token system is designed. Now comes the part no one wants to do manually — ripping out every legacy dynamic resource... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/i-let-ai-refactor-everything-here-s-what-happened-dhihs2wox og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/DHIHs2wOX.png og:image:alt: I Let AI Refactor Everything — Here's What Happened og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # I Let AI Refactor Everything — Here's What Happened **[AngelSix](https://daily.dev/sources/angelsix)** · 47 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary The new theme engine is in. The design token system is designed. Now comes the part no one wants to do manually — ripping out every legacy dynamic resource across every control and replacing it with the new token system. In this episode, I use AI agents to do the grunt work so I don't have to. But this isn't vibe coding. The key is the prompt. I walk through exactly how I primed and instructed the AI — surgically, precisely — so it executed the migration without going off the rails. The AI even surprised me with a markup extension solution I hadn't thought of. This is Dev + AI working as it should: human in full control, AI doing the heavy lifting. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • How to structure an AI prompt to do precise, surgical code migration — not vague generation • Why priming your AI agent with context before the task changes everything • What happened when a local AI tried to grant itself admin access — and why security layers matter • How the AI handled replacing all legacy dynamic resources with the new design token system • Iterative prompting: how to guide the AI through questions and scope changes in real-time • The unexpected markup extension solution the AI came up with — and why it was the right call • How to use value converters for asymmetric padding/margin scenarios in the token system • What a one-hour AI-assisted dev cycle looks like vs days of manual migration • When to let AI make decisions vs when to pull it back — staying in control throughout ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱ TIMESTAMPS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [0:00] – Introduction — the new theme engine & design token system recap [0:47] – What the design token system gives us: surface, on-surface, semantic naming [1:33] – The problem: manual migration across every control would take days [2:25] – The solution: AI agents as a surgical migration tool [4:45] – The AI agent tool — chat view, Kanban board, and security features [6:01] – Crafting the initial migration prompt — exactly what I told the AI [9:26] – ⚠️ The rogue AI moment — local model tries to get admin access [12:05] – AI starts executing, asks clarifying questions, user provides guidance [16:19] – First pass complete: button spinner migrated, user reviews accuracy [18:32] – Expanding the task: full reskin across all controls + delete orphaned files [27:49] – Second pass done — AI raises questions about remaining base resources [28:51] – Brainstorming: tokenisation approach vs value converters for complex padding [36:04] – AI proposes final approach, user approves parallel execution [44:51] – Final outcome: clean minimal theme structure + the markup extension surprise [47:20] – Reflections on AI-assisted development — what this changes going forward ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 LINKS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▶ Part 1 – Setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUKlQnjU0tc ▶ Part 2 – Buttons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKjk6pyyARI ▶ Part 3 – Button Spinner Anatomy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMaTbXkvm9g ▶ Part 4 – Designing a Theme System: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5halHoNfH0 ▶ Part 5 – Checkbox Anatomy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIimnwjITT0 ▶ Part 6 – Checkbox Styling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv1bNrfCjtY ▶ Part 7 – Theme Engine From Scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXz8hwITg5U ▶ Part 8 – Design Token System: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMVdxRZqaU8 📺 Full Series Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrW43fNmjaQVE2vDBeWD8QYIm06w6bKyO 💾 Source Code: https://github.com/angelsix/youtube/tree/develop/AvaloniaThemeLab 🌐 AngelSix: https://www.angelsix.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📺 SERIES: Avalonia UI Theming – Hand Coded From Scratch ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #avalonia #avaloniaui #xaml #csharp #dotnet #aiagent #aitools #softwaretutorial #coding ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. 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