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Pawel Jozefiak's avatar

Love this step-by-step breakdown! As someone who's been deep in the AI prototyping trenches, I can't stress enough how important that initial requirements phase is (I've learned this the hard way D:).

Here's a practical tip from my experiments: Start even smaller than you think you need to. Like, microscopically small. Those 'simple' prototypes have a funny way of growing complex real fast.

The real game-changer? Using AI not just for the coding part, but for the whole ideation-to-prototype pipeline. Though heads up - you'll still need to be the one making the strategic decisions. AI is an amazing co-pilot, but you've got to be the captain.

Want to see some real-world AI prototyping adventures? I recently wrote about my late-night coding sessions with AI tools: https://thoughts.jock.pl/p/building-apps-with-ai-2025-late-night-coding-adventure

(And yes, some of those experiments crashed and burned - but those are often the best learning experiences :)

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Nice, Pawel! It looks like you've been building many things recently. Will follow your journey.

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Pawel Jozefiak's avatar

Thanks!

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Rose Beverly's avatar

Brilliant. I've been using lovable.dev to prototype.

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Amazing, Rose. How's been your experience so far?

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Bharat's avatar

Awesome !!!

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Thanks Bharat!

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Flo's avatar

Really fascinating to see how fast you can create a running prototype or even finished products nowadays.

Last week I tried out Codeium’s Windsurf editor and was blown away. I’ve created a working website just by promting without a single line of code written by myself.

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Xinran Ma's avatar

I have not heard of Windsurf. Is it like Cursor?

Great to hear your perspectives as a software developer!

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Flo's avatar

Yes, it is like Cursor (also a VS Code fork). It was developed by the guys from Codeium which I've used previously so I gave it a shot.

Also, they've got a cool and unique domain name: wind.surf

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Xinran Ma's avatar

That is a cool name/idea!

And that makes sense. It seems to be a common scenario where users adopt AI tools because they have used products/services from the same provider before.

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Steve's avatar

Does the Bolt product have a back end? Or is it more like a Claude “artifact”

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Xinran Ma's avatar

It does have a backend!

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Steve's avatar

Mind blown!

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Evelyn So (Thinker & Co.)'s avatar

Do you have a subscription with Claude? While I had a great experience using it to do some mockups, the usage limit is really low.

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Xinran Ma's avatar

I do. I am on the Pro plan, which has 5x the usage limit of the Free plan.

That said, it's still easy to reach the limit when coding/building things.

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Mary Decodes Design's avatar

Wow, I need to try this out! Thanks Xinran for sharing this 👌🏻

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Thanks Mary! Looking forward to your newsletter too.

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Mariusz Smolinski's avatar

Absolutely need to try this out! Thanks for sharing this! 🔥

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Thanks Mariusz!

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Lily Carter's avatar

Love the step by step breakdown, especially the smart workaround for UX Pilot’s paywall. Definitely trying this out.

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Thank you, Lily!

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Vee — Product Designer's avatar

This is thoughtful!! I'd like to try

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Thanks Vee! Give them a try and I'm curious to hear about your experience.

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Mustafa Kapadia's avatar

Xinran, this is great. I love that you take the extra step to design it in UX Pilot before you use bolt. It is so much better from a fidelity perspective. Have you tried Loveable, it now allows you to upload figma files and then use AI to prototype on top of it.

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Thanks a lot, Mustafa! I only tried Lovable once and didn't use that feature. How was the experience? I need to try it out.

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Indranil Builds Here..'s avatar

This was extremely helpful. Will definitely build something in this month and I will also share all of my journey

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Amazing! I'll be following your journey.

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Ed's avatar

Great stuff Xin. Seeing it consume the screen grabs as a reference is super cool

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Hi Ed! Great to see you here. Yes, the screen grabs were often helpful to control the results.

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Steve's avatar

Cool demo!

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Xinran Ma's avatar

Thanks Steve!

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Feb 6
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Xinran Ma's avatar

Thanks Sabine! For some reason, I just saw your comment! Sorry.

Yes, I tried Loveable (via its integration with Builder.io). I was not impressed. The result was not good. I'll try again sometime to see whether it gets better or not.

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