--- title: Which Design Doc Did a Human Write? | daily.dev description: An author spent 16 hours writing a design doc by hand, then generated two more using Claude Opus and GPT-5 (Codex), and challenged readers to identify the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/which-design-doc-did-a-human-write--nxf8w7jmn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Which Design Doc Did a Human Write? | daily.dev og:description: An author spent 16 hours writing a design doc by hand, then generated two more using Claude Opus and GPT-5 (Codex), and challenged readers to identify the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/which-design-doc-did-a-human-write--nxf8w7jmn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/nXF8W7jMN.png og:image:alt: Which Design Doc Did a Human Write? 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. # Which Design Doc Did a Human Write? **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 7 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An author spent 16 hours writing a design doc by hand, then generated two more using Claude Opus and GPT-5 (Codex), and challenged readers to identify the human-written version. Just under 50% of readers correctly identified the human version. Key human giveaways included personal opinions, anecdotal experience, unusual technology choices, and organic structure. AI giveaways included verbose bloat, meaningless bold text, overly precise time estimates, and generic security/privacy sections that lacked app-specific reasoning. The author concludes that AI-generated design docs miss the hard problems — the competing interests and tough decisions that define real design thinking. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Content Designer’s Guide to Sounding Human \(in 2026\)](https://daily.dev/posts/the-content-designer-s-guide-to-sounding-human-in-2026--zlgkguwx8) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [DOC • Who Owns the Doubt?](https://daily.dev/posts/doc-who-owns-the-doubt--6qvsdsulm) · DOC · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How To Stay Original While Designing With AI](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-stay-original-while-designing-with-ai-qxx9wjgsd) · Dribbble · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How to Humanize AI-Written Technical Documentation](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-humanize-ai-written-technical-documentation-i8vigeyhy) · SitePoint · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career), [#chatgpt](https://daily.dev/tags/chatgpt), [#claude](https://daily.dev/tags/claude) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/which-design-doc-did-a-human-write--nxf8w7jmn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Which Design Doc Did a Human Write?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/which-design-doc-did-a-human-write--nxf8w7jmn","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/which-design-doc-did-a-human-write--nxf8w7jmn"},"datePublished":"2026-03-26T10:24:23.831Z","dateModified":"2026-03-26T10:24:54.178Z","description":"An author spent 16 hours writing a design doc by hand, then generated two more using Claude Opus and GPT-5 (Codex), and challenged readers to identify the...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/f4ebbb4584a9abdccc8ac19ffe55bfab?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/f4ebbb4584a9abdccc8ac19ffe55bfab?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/which-design-doc-did-a-human-write--nxf8w7jmn","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"career,chatgpt,claude","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Which Design Doc Did a Human Write?"}]} ```