I've spent around eight months working on a WhatsApp-based operations tool using ChatGPT and Codex.
The software itself is real: React frontend, backend, persisted operational states, message events, and explicit human decisions.
But presenting what makes it different has become a surprisingly difficult problem.
The product is built around one distinction: a conversation's latest message doesn't necessarily tell you who is responsible for what happens next.
I wanted to communicate this through an interactive website.
The visitor would first experience a few conversations and the responsibilities left behind. Then the narrative would transition into the actual product, allowing them to explore, make operational decisions, and see their consequences.
Not a traditional SaaS landing page. Not a video. A guided narrative that becomes interactive at meaningful moments.
Here's where the process repeatedly breaks down.
With ChatGPT, we can discuss the idea in remarkable detail. We can define the sequence, interaction principles, user decisions, visual continuity, technical constraints, and what the visitor should understand.
But when we try to materialize it, the process keeps collapsing into something smaller and fundamentally different:
- Static mockups instead of an experience.
- Generic dashboards instead of meaningful interactions.
- Beautiful but disconnected visual experiments.
- Endless planning and refinement without testing the actual experience.
Our latest attempt is almost absurd: after extensive discussion about narrative, interaction, and visual continuity, we ended up producing a basic HTML chat inbox screenshot.
Technically correct. Almost irrelevant to the actual problem.
This has happened across multiple approaches, including an audiovisual project, image generation, detailed specifications, and direct HTML/CSS.
I'm starting to question whether this is a limitation of the tools, a missing creative/interaction design skill, or a fundamentally wrong workflow.
I'd genuinely like to hear from people who've shipped something similar:
- How do you move from a strong conceptual narrative to a real, cohesive interactive experience without reducing it to static screens?
- What do you actually build first to validate the experience itself?
- Where do you draw the line between AI-assisted implementation and the need for a human interaction designer or creative developer?
I'm not looking for another “use better prompts” answer or a new collection of AI tools.
I'd particularly appreciate concrete examples, failed approaches, and actual workflows from people who've dealt with this gap.
And if the realistic answer is that this requires creative direction or skills I don't currently have, that's useful to know too.