Mahmoud Halat writes and maintains Should It Be a Prompt? He's the founder of Space & Story, a web and AI studio in Toronto that builds websites, apps and AI products for clients.
What he builds
Most of Space & Story's client work starts with the question this site is named after: does this need software, or would a prompt, a skill or a connector do? That judgement comes from building on every rung of the ladder: client apps, AI features inside existing products, skills and MCP servers, and agents that run on their own. He won the Grand Prize in Lovable's Shipped season 1, and he builds with coding agents regularly; this site was built with Claude Code.
What he writes here
- The decision tool and the pattern library: the rules for choosing a prompt, skill, MCP server, agent or app.
- The reviews and comparisons of AI app builders, coding agents and agent frameworks, scored on a published rubric.
- The Moat Line essays, on what stays defensible once anything can be built in a weekend.
Disclosures
- Space & Story is his studio, and it's mentioned once, on the app builders comparison.
- Skillspace (skillspace.sh), a directory that grades agent skills, is run by the same team. It appears on the registry comparison, the vetting guide and the pattern library, always labelled as ours.
- Lovable: he won its Shipped season 1 Grand Prize. Lovable has never paid this site.
- Claude Code: he uses it regularly, on a paid plan he pays for himself.
- No product on this site pays for placement or commissions.