AI coding agents enable "vibe coding," where non-engineers like designers can build functional prototypes without deep technical expertise. This accelerates iteration by allowing designers to translate ideas directly into interactive surfaces for testing.

In AI, low prototyping costs and customer uncertainty make the traditional research-first PM model obsolete. The new approach is to build a prototype quickly, show it to customers to discover possibilities, and then iterate based on their reactions, effectively building the solution before the problem is fully defined.

AI tools like Vibe Coding remove the traditional dependency on design and engineering for prototyping. Product managers without coding expertise can now build and test functional prototypes with customers in hours, drastically accelerating problem-solution fit validation before committing development resources.

At OpenAI, the development cycle is accelerated by a practice called "vibe coding." Designers and PMs build functional prototypes directly with AI tools like Codex. This visual, interactive method is often faster and more effective for communicating ideas than writing traditional product specifications.

AI co-pilots have accelerated engineering velocity to the point where traditional design-led workflows are now the slowest part of product development. In response, some agile teams are flipping the process, having engineers build a functional prototype first and then creating formal Figma designs and UI polish later.

Historically, resource-intensive prototyping (requiring designers and tools like Figma) was reserved for major features. AI tools reduce prototype creation time to minutes, allowing PMs to de-risk even minor features with user testing and solution discovery, improving the entire product's success rate.

As AI makes the act of writing code a commodity, the primary challenge is no longer execution but discovery. The most valuable work becomes prototyping and exploring to determine *what* should be built, increasing the strategic importance of the design function.

A prototype-first culture, accelerated by AI tools, allows teams to surface and resolve design and workflow conflicts early. At Webflow, designers were asked to 'harmonize' their separate prototypes, preventing a costly integration problem that would have been much harder to fix later in the development cycle.

AI prototyping tools enable a new, rapid feedback loop. Instead of showing one prototype to ten customers over weeks, you can get feedback from the first, immediately iterate with AI, and show an improved version to the next customer, compressing learning cycles into hours.