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Stripe built "Protodash," an internal tool that allows designers, PMs, and engineers to quickly create high-fidelity AI prototypes that mirror the real product. This removes the bottleneck of needing engineering for early exploration and empowers proactive, cross-functional ideation.
Vercel's Pranati Perry explains that tools like V0 occupy a new space between static design (Figma) and development. They enable designers and PMs to create interactive prototypes that better communicate intent, supplement PRDs, and explore dynamic states without requiring full engineering resources.
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.
The traditional workflow (Idea -> PRD -> Alignment) is outdated. Now, PMs first create a functional AI prototype. This visual, interactive artifact is then brought to engineers and scientists for debate, accelerating alignment and making the development process more creative and collaborative from the start.
Capable AI coding assistants allow PMs to build and test functional prototypes or "skills" in a single day. This changes the product development philosophy, prioritizing quick validation with users over creating detailed UI mockups and specifications upfront.
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.
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.
Years of focusing on MVPs has weakened the ability of product teams to imagine magical, delightful features. AI prototyping tools make ambitious ideas easier to build, helping teams reignite their creative muscles and aim for awesome products, not just viable ones.
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.
Traditional agile development, despite its intent, still involves handoffs between research, design, and engineering which create opportunities for misinterpretation. AI tools collapse this sequential process, allowing a single person to move from idea to interactive prototype in minutes, keeping human judgment and creativity tightly coupled.