The traditional design-to-engineering handoff is plagued by tedious pixel-pushing. As AI coding tools empower designers to make visual code changes themselves, they will reject this inefficient back-and-forth, fundamentally changing team workflows.

To keep pace with AI development, the barrier between design and engineering must fall. Intercom made it a non-negotiable job requirement for every product designer to ship code to production. This empowers them to fix UI bugs directly and accelerates the entire development cycle.

Instead of building on existing web standards, Rive created its own specification and renderer. This freedom from legacy constraints allowed them to build a format optimized for real-time, interactive performance, which existing standards could not support.

For individuals who both design and code, finishing a visual design isn't a moment of triumph but one of dread, as they know the lengthy process of coding it from scratch has just begun. This specific emotional pain point is a core motivator for building next-generation tools that eliminate this redundant step.

The current model of separate design files and codebases is inefficient. Future tools will enable designers to directly manipulate production code through a visual canvas, eliminating the handoff process and creating a single, shared source of truth for the entire team.

Move beyond basic AI prototyping by exporting your design system into a machine-readable format like JSON. By feeding this into an AI agent, you can generate high-fidelity, on-brand components and code that engineers can use directly, dramatically accelerating the path from idea to implementation.

Rive deliberately uses correct engineering terminology like "view models" instead of simplified alternatives like "variables." This opinionated choice forces a common language, leveling up designers' technical understanding and improving collaboration by ensuring everyone works with the same concepts and constraints.

Traditionally, designers needed to understand code limitations to create feasible UIs. With tools that render a live DOM on the canvas, this is no longer necessary. If a design can be created in the tool, it is, by definition, valid and buildable code.

Rive intentionally doesn't support importing from other design tools. Its high-performance rendering features (like vector feathering) differ from standard effects. Forcing creation within Rive's editor guarantees the design-time preview perfectly matches the final runtime output, eliminating mismatches.