Anyways, this is 100% a shot at Figma, but also catching Lovable in the crossfire. If anybody from Anthropic is reading this, if you keep developing this with features in Figma and other design tools, you'll have a major hit on your hands.
Figma is targeted towards designers who create thoughtful design systems and cohesive UIs and who don't code, while this is targeted towards vibe coders who can't design. Two different circles that intersect to some level.
But like you said, if anthropic adds the tools in Figma, only then they can can take customers from Figma IMO.
But for the other 95% of people, being able to just say "ok can you make it look more modern" and have 4 variants in 5 mins, (like me) Figma will lose users like me.
But then again I was never a "designer" – more a builder.
I've never paid for a figma seat. A couple of employers have so that I can collaborate with designers in the product, but I don't think this changes that.
In an era where it's cheaper and more common to end up at that undifferentiated state, the ability for companies to make their products go above and beyond it is more valuable, not less.
I see this across the board with AI. It lowers the bar to get to passable, but as slop fills the internet we're already seeing people place more value in good products, good writing, good art, thoughtful code architecture, etc. Everyone and their cousin's uber driver is vibe coding a SaaS startup no one's going to pay for right now.
If you are talking about a consumer product, one of these is not like the others.
The Anthropic video on that page at 0:53 literally shows them clicking a "knobs" button and adjusting the pixel CSS value.
I know it's not exactly the same ... but it has that functionality to a degree.
Same here. I work in Claude Code all day long on slightly complex b2b apps, and the builder MVP for what I want to do with Claude.ai, to work on ideas is far simpler.
I just want to be able to create a React artifact prototype on claude.ai, then share it privately with a stakeholder (internal or external.) I want to allow those users to prompt changes, then see their changes in the artifact.
The bespoke design is not what I am really worried about at this phase. For b2b prototype stuff, claude.ai already does an excellent job with just a bit of project-specific prompting.
Why is this shared artifact building not yet doable? This seems "so simple." Yes, maybe some shared artifact specific git to allow version control is required, but is my ask really that hard, or unique?
The challenge is that this sets an expectation of what "design" is, de-valuing the former and shifting us culturally towards the latter and a space where "design" is seen as a subjective visual exercise with little intrinsic value.
How many such people does the world need? Probably less than 1,000. Not a very big market for Figma.
this overlap has been widening incredibly quickly. lots of designers are now writing code with the help of cursor, claude code, etc.
even if you believe "real designers" wont ever use this product, it's not hard to see how a low barrier-of-entry tool could affect Figams bottom line. slowing down Figma's adoption from the new wave of entry-level designers who dont already have muscle memory would not at all surprise me at all.
But for me, I will never use it again.
Not convinced Figma cares about traditional design craft anymore.
These areas obviously tie into engineering very closely, but the thinking that goes into them happens at the design stage, at a lower cost than starting with engineering. AI models suck at getting every facet of this process right, because designers are achieving a balance between branding, usability, standards, taste, and differentiation -- the exact opposite of a model trained to reach for the most average outputs.
Had they not included support for it, where would they be now? I'd wager a critical mass would be screeching to High Heaven for integrations, seeing as a Figma document is effectively a config file that can be translated to real code.
So I helped her look into it and I was shocked to find out that it just a react slop generator, not a Figma file generator. And extremely limited at that, too.
Who is Figma targeting with this exactly? Developers, who are interested in react apps will simply use claude code, and UX designers don't really care for react apps.
He should probably go and let someone else take the reigns.
Not entirely but I would use this and not Figma. I am passionate about system design not visual design so I don’t want to waste time in figma.
> The folks at Wall Street do not understand
It probably reduces the tasks which customers might engage an agency using Figma, though. Down the line, creeping onto Figma’s turf absolutely becomes a strategy for Anthropic.
Figma is for those who could design but can’t code.
This is for those who could neither design nor code.
Tailwind is an abstraction on top of CSS and you can create with it whatever website you want (almost).
I understand the idea behind your comment but feels to be that it sound better than it is true :)
That's meeeee.
Its making alot of bold assumptions, but we live in interesting times so thats par for the course
Granted, I have not worked with that many designers so it’s maybe small N problem.
The gap between figma and where our front end teams work and design is still too large.
I think the more likely result of this is fewer designers and more work for developers with some design skills.
https://stitch.withgoogle.com/
I'm now pasting all my Stitch output into Claude Design to see what happens.
edit: First impressions are great. It asked me a ton of really great questions about my design aspirations and direction, which were incredibly relevant and insightful. Waiting to see what it makes.
edit2: It did astonishingly well with the first design pass. Really outstanding. This is probably going to be my primary prototyping tool until the Next Best Thing(tm) drops in a few weeks.
I also understand that our wonderful quality of life is due to automation, and sometimes that means I draw the short straw. That's okay.
The SWE people I know at SW companies now heavily using these agents complain to me how their workday is nothing but code-reviews of the agents output and tedious prompting to prod it back into line; they say they don’t get to actually write code until they get home to work on their personal projects.
3 years ago I never would have believed this capability was possible; I’ve since adjusted my expectations to now assume that in another 3 years the models/agents will have improved enough to reduce the amount of code-review required, leaving us with precious little else to do for our shareholders, or the opposite: they don’t improve and we’re stuck doing thankless PR reviews until the end.
Please tell me where and how in this future I’m supposed to find satisfaction and pride in my work when what-gets-produced isn’t my own work anymore?
They're down 80% over the last year. Ouch.
Figma actually put the work in to make a great product that performs well and offers anything you could imagine to design just about anything you need, with AI integrations and deep manual editing to sweat the details.
Design work is already under a lot of pressure. I work with somebody that has an industrial design background and he's having a lot of fun with AI tools. There is still a need for good designers. But not to do a lot of the low end design work that has been common in a lot of front end teams. That stuff was always a bit questionable in value. I know some decent designers that were actually getting bored with that type of work. It's very repetitive.