DEV Community: Laurel Beyers

After the Hack: Reigniting My Creative Confidence

Laurel Beyers — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 17:07:07 +0000

When I joined the Bolt hackathon, I was a few months into my creative sabbatical — taking time to reconnect with my maker side while navigating the realities of job hunting in a tough market.

I knew landing the right role might take time, so I gave myself permission to use that time intentionally: to rest, reflect, and explore creativity on my own terms. I've taken a lot of courses and classes over the past 6 months, like learning to make stained glass, metal and glass-smithing as well as sewing.

Somewhere in the middle of the arts & crafts I was also finding time to learn AI as well, so when a friend sent me a link to the world’s largest hackathon, I knew this would be a great way to propel that effort forward and dive in deep!

I decided the best way to do this was to join a vibe-coding challenge cohort, then I fired up Bolt, and decided to build something that felt personal and necessary.

That “something” became Layoff Relief — a post-layoff companion tool for people in tech to help them navigate severance, unemployment, insurance, and the identity-shaking fog that follows.

🔥 What I Gained (That Has Nothing to Do with Code)

This wasn’t just a “build an app” moment. It was a creative reawakening.

Through the act of designing and shipping something end-to-end, I rediscovered:

Momentum through curiosity. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone — I just wanted to make something helpful. That took the pressure off and let me find my creative flow.
Solid prompt-writing skills. Despite being dyslexic, I learned that good prompt writing isn’t about perfect grammar — it’s about clarity, intention, and detail. If you can describe it, you can build it.
Confidence in my ability to ship. While I’d still want a professional developer to help ensure deployment and security best practices, I now know I can architect a working product from concept to build.
Joy in polishing. I didn’t just build; I iterated. I edited copy, cleaned up flows, and applied UX principles with intuition — all through prompts.
A new north star. I’m most energized when I’m building products that support people’s well-being — whether that’s physical, mental, work-related, or just bringing more ease into their lives. That’s where I’m headed next.

🚀 What’s Next: From Hackathon to Studio

Layoff Relief was more than a hackathon project — it was the launchpad for my next chapter.

Since the hackathon ended, I’ve been:

Gathering feedback on how I could improve the app
Exploring how it might support employee offboarding for companies
Considering whether to expand its features depending on organic interest — things like secure doc storage, guided journaling, or an AI-powered layoff coach
Realizing I can now build much more confidently, with better prompts and a sharper product POV

...and while I was building Layoff Relief, I also ended up vibe-coding a pre-launch site for my UX design studio: Curionaut Studios.

I couldn’t help myself — I had a vision, a spark, and Bolt helped me move on both ideas at once. Curionaut will be my container for bringing curiosity, design thinking, and intentional systems to people and projects that are trying to make life better.

💬 Final Reflection

This hackathon reminded me that I'm still a builder. That creativity is a tool for healing. And that my ideas are worth making real.

If you're in a moment of transition — whether you've been laid off, burned out, or are just in-between — I hope this gives you permission to build for you. You don’t need to wait for funding, a team, or a “real” plan.

Start with what feels meaningful.

Ship something small.

Let that momentum show you what’s next.

Thanks to Bolt, I remembered how much I love doing that.

🔗 Try the app: https://layoffrelief.me

🛠 Read how I built it: My “Building with Bolt” post →

📬 Subscribe to future updates: Curionaut Dispatch (https://curionaut.beehiiv.com/subscribe)

Written by Laurel — founder of Curionaut Studios, product designer, & creative technologist.

From Laid Off to Layoff Relief: How I Built a Personalized Post-Layoff Copilot in Bolt

Laurel Beyers — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 04:10:31 +0000

Like many in tech this year, I got laid off.

So I took a sabbatical — a much-needed pause to recoup from unrealized burnout and reconnect with my creative maker side. After a couple of months filled with arts, crafts, and AI courses, a friend mentioned a massive hackathon happening. So I decided to test out my prompt skills, joined a vibe-coding challenge cohort, and started learning by doing. That’s when my Bolt journey began.

As a product designer and UX leader, I’ve spent the past 6 years designing highly technical B2B SaaS tools that use AI/ML to support network engineers in their day-to-day. But on this creative sabbatical, I started wondering — how could AI support me? I had so many ideas I never had the time, budget, or engineering chops to fully bring to life. Learning to vibe-code has changed that.

Vibe-coding cracked open the imaginative, inventive side of me that had been quietly waiting for a chance to build.

💡 The Spark: Turning a Low Point into a Prototype

Even though I thought I was prepared for my layoff, there were still so many blurry questions — not just around logistics like severance, unemployment, and insurance, but also around identity and next steps. ("Oh... I'm unemployed... and it's been 6 years since I last applied for a job. Where do I even start?")

So I asked myself:

What if a tool could walk people through this experience like a calm and encouraging coach — no corporate jargon, no legalese, just helpful, clear info and emotional support?

That idea became Layoff Relief — a personalized dashboard + checklist app that helps users navigate post-layoff chaos with structure, clarity, and reflection.

🧠 Structuring the Build (with a UX Brain)

Before I jumped into Bolt, I did what any good solo builder with access to ChatGPT would do — I word-vomited my idea into a chat. Then I asked ChatGPT to act like a UX-aware PM and help me write a PRD. Once that was solid, I asked it to break the project into sprints optimized for token usage in Bolt and structured to minimize bugs.

Oh — and I told it to do all that knowing I only had about a week (and let’s be real, maybe 18 hours total) to build it. Because, being me, I had already overcommitted to a stained glass intensive, sewing lessons, starting a business, and just generally living my best crafty sabbatical life. So I needed a smart, lightweight roadmap I could vibe-code my way through between craft breaks and AI bootcamp sprints.

I treated this like a real product. But I made a deliberate decision not to mock anything up — even though that’s my strength — because I wanted to see how far I could get by designing directly in Bolt with words and structure alone.

Here's a short summary of what I outlined and broke into sprints:

Audience: Laid-off tech workers who feel stuck or overwhelmed
Core Features:
- Simple onboarding to collect key info
- Custom dashboard with deadlines (severance, WARN/garden leave, unemployment, COBRA)
- Emotional check-ins and “what I did well” reflections
- Pre-filled to-dos and countdowns
- Custom state-based resource links for unemployment and insurance
- A place to track key contacts and must-save links or docs

⚡ Enter Bolt: From Idea to MVP

Bolt made building fun. I’m not an engineer — I dabbled in HTML/CSS back in the day and am relatively new to AI prompt writing — but with Bolt, I felt like I’d unlocked new superpowers.

Highlights of my build:

✅ Supabase authentication & user database

✅ Custom Domain through IONIS

✅ Netlify Integration

✅ Personalized dashboard based on user inputs

✅ Visual countdowns for each key date, with callouts for critical to-dos

✅ Optional reflections to help reframe the layoff story and track wins

I built and iterated fast — sometimes in 3-hour sprints between creative classes and cohort calls. Despite the speed, it never felt rushed. Bolt made the process intuitive, easy to navigate, and actually joyful.

In total, I spent around 18 hours building this concept app — and it felt surprisingly smooth.

🛠️ Troubleshooting & Learning in Public

Not everything went perfectly — and that’s part of the charm.

I hit CSS library issues and had to start over the Friday before the deadline 😅
I made UX tradeoffs to prioritize clarity and simplicity
I burned through my Bolt credits faster than expected — but buying more was worth it to finish strong
I'm so glad I did the Maven Bootcamp — I don’t think I would’ve gotten as far as I did without the support of that community and the encouragement to just keep going

I leaned into the spirit of vibe-coding: build what feels meaningful, and ship something small but helpful.

🧹 Iterating Like a Designer

As a designer, I couldn’t not finesse the experience once the MVP was up and running. I walked through the flow over and over — asking myself the usual questions:

Does this feel necessary? Intuitive? Distracting? Confusing?

But this time, instead of writing up a long doc, creating tickets, or chasing alignment...

I just told Bolt to fix it.

It was like doing a classic fit & finish review — minus the meetings and follow-ups.

Just me, applying UX principles and intuition, and a prompt window.

I simplified what felt noisy, cleaned up copy, and removed anything that didn’t add value. I hid steps that didn’t need to show up yet. I tweaked button logic, empty states, and visual clarity.

This is where the design really came alive — through intentional edits and fast iterations. It felt less like managing a build, and more like shaping a tool with my hands.

🌱 What’s Next

Layoff Relief is just getting started. I’m continuing to refine it and share it with others who’ve been laid off. Here’s where I want to take it next:

AI-powered document reader to summarize contracts or severance letters (if legally feasible)
Resume suggestions based on your “what I did well” journaling
Support for international users
An AI-generated “coach” or counselor you can talk things through with
Secure document storage for important layoff paperwork
B2B offerings for companies to provide Layoff Relief to departing employees

🎯 Final Thoughts

Bolt wasn’t just a tool — it was truly my engineering co-pilot. It helped me turn a chaotic, emotional transition into a thoughtful, empowering experience.

As someone who’s always built for others, this hackathon reminded me that I can build for myself, too.

If you’ve been laid off — or know someone who has — you can check out the concept app here:

👉 https://layoffrelief.me

And like any good UXer, I added in a feedback form to gather any user's ideas, frustrations, or bugs they find so I can help improve it based on real user input.

Cheers

Laurel, your fellow Creative Curionaut

Designing better systems for real-life transitions ✨