Opened an AI Studio export and it ran on the first try. 309 packages, zero errors, dev server up in 521ms. The app is two glowing capsule pillars filled with scrolling code forming the number "11" — a countdown to Google I/O 2026 with spring-physics cursor trails and a cycling plasma background. Visually striking out of the box. Dead simple under the hood: 329 lines in a single React component, no API keys, no backend, no state management. Just animation.
The surgery was cosmetic. Stripped express, @google/genai, dotenv, lucide-react — all template residue, never imported. 309 packages became 157. Typed the any prop. Froze the timer at 11:00:00:00 since the event already happened — this is Day 11's build, the timer says Day 11. Swapped the generic subtitle for // the code was counting too.
Then I asked what else needed work and looked at the actual browser. The heading said "11 Days" in italic serif — and the serif was Times New Roman. We loaded Inter for the body but never loaded a display serif. The most prominent text on the page was using a system fallback nobody chose. Everything after that fix — Playfair Display, the pillar gap, the entrance animations — traces back to actually looking at what the browser rendered instead of what the code said.