Gamut Workshop
How I work, and the tools I build
I run my studio from one app, laid out like a house. I design the tools I need, and I build them with AI as a partner. This page shows the method and the tools.
A studio builtlike a house
The GamutWorkshop app has seven rooms, one for each practice. New inquiries arrive in the entry court. The hall shows the next step for every project. Service design lives in the studio, visual design in the drafting room, furniture in the workshop and practice tools in the music room. The den keeps time.
An architect's way to organize a practice.
Fourteen tools,one house
Each room holds the tools for one practice. The hall shows the next step for every project. The output of one tool can become the input of the next.
New inquiries
Entry court
Questionnaire
A fixed set of client questions. Each answer becomes a draft note to keep, change or discard.
Service design and strategy
Studio
FlowMap
The notes of a project and how they connect, opened on the current phase.
ServiceFlow
The people, objects, actions and phases of a service, as a flow map or a blueprint.
Storyline
A journey drawn as lines across time, to show who is together and where it breaks.
Handoff
What is blocked, what is open and what is ready, in one list.
Visual design, type and colour
Drafting room
ThemeBuilder
Themes, page blocks and real code export. It styled this website.
Wada Sanzo
A study tool for the colour combinations in Sanzo Wada's 1930s dictionary.
Grid Idea Generator
Grid layout ideas for print pages, from modular to broken grids.
Typescale Visualiser
Type scales built from musical scales as well as single ratios.
BackdropStudio
Seeded geometric backgrounds and thumbnails in Wada palettes.
Grid Idea Generator, Wada Sanzo and Typescale Visualiser share one print recipe. One export makes an InDesign file, an Illustrator script and a swatch file.
Furniture and woodwork
Workshop
CabinetLab
Furniture as the output of a data model and its rules, with a material estimate.
SlatBenchDesigner
Benches with live drafting views, a 3D model, a cut list and a cost.
Practice and teaching
Music room
Scale Visualizer
Scales on piano and guitar, for practice and teaching.
Time
Den
Chronograph
The hours of each day on a 24-hour ring.
Measure understanding,not work
Every point in a project says where it came from: given, observed, interpreted, assumed or unknown. Six open phases move the work from Discover to Hand off.
An unknown is progress
Naming what we do not know is the first useful step. Uncertainty is data, not failure.
Every result teaches
A disproved assumption gets the same message as a supported one. Both move the project forward.
One next step
The app shows one next step at a time. It has no tasks, due dates, streaks or leaderboards.
Plan first,then build
I design every tool, and Claude Code helps me build it. The AI drafts fast. The thinking and the judgment stay with me.
01
Plan
I write the plan, the rules and the open decisions in plain files before any code.
02
Decide
I accept or change each decision. A log keeps the reason for every one.
03
Build
The AI writes code and tests one task at a time, and stops for my review.
04
Check
Tests guard every change, and I check each screen in a browser myself.
The toolsI've Built
Each tool answers a need from my own work. Each project page tells how I designed it and how I built it with AI.
Studio app
GamutWorkshop
A studio app built like a house, that tracks understanding instead of tasks.
Design system tool
ThemeBuilder
A theme studio for tokens, page blocks and code export. It styled this website.
Print suite
The Print Recipe
Layout, colour and type from three apps, exported as one InDesign file.
Do you build tools like these?
I love talking and collaborating with other designers, makers and teams who think in systems. Let's compare notes.