Welcome back.

It's been a dizzying week in design:

• Dribbble Policy Changes: The design community is losing its mind over Dribbble's new policy of walled payments. Many are saying goodbye.
• Felix Lee and ADP List Drama: Design mentorship platform ADP List and its founder are being hit hard by design theft and content accusations.
• Config Speaker Lineup Dropped: Figma released their conference linup. I'm stoked for Inga Hampton sharing her chaotic Figma process, Steve Sewell's talk on coding designs with AI, and Karri's quality over process session.
• The Biggest Config After Party: I'm hosting the Detach After Party at Config with Soren Iverson, Jesse Showalter and Femke. We sold out last year. Tickets just dropped.
• Soren Iverson's Figma Commercial: Speaking of Soren, his agency just shipped a Figma commercial in one week – the velocity of creative agencies in 2025 is wild.
• A Real Design Engineer: Jhey Tompkins, Vercel's design engineer (and an absolute beast of talent) joins us this Friday on our Release Notes livestream. I've been looking forward to chat this for a while.

And while all of this is going on, there's a batch of "quiet movers" gaining serious traction behind the scenes. Let's get into it.

- Tommy (@designertom)

the wireframe

• The quiet movers you’ve never heard of
• Why design directly with your codebase matters
• How this can change your workflow

the quiet movers you've never heard of

While Twitter lights up with AI hackathons or whether Cursor is better than Windsurf, these lesser-known players are cooking:

Tempo: YC-Backed Visual Editor for React Code

​Tempo came out of Y Combinator’s Summer 2023 batch with a clear mission: build a visual editor that directly modifies React code in your actual codebase.

What’s rad about it:

• Looks like a design tool, works like an IDE under the hood
• AI-powered UI generation specifically for React components
• One-click deployment for fast testing
• Full support for Tailwind and modern React frameworks

This combination of familiar design tool metaphors with direct code access is looking more promising than it ever has.

Onlook: "Cursor for Designers"

This open-source Y Combinator W25 tool is exactly what it sounds like - it does for designers what Cursor AI has done for developers.

Its approach is sick:

• Local-first so your code stays on your machine
• Visual editing directly in live React apps
• Draw elements on your page with real-time code updates
• Auto-detects reused components across your app (a paradigm I think will become commonplace)

With nearly 9k stars on Github and 65+ contributors, Onlook is building serious open-source momentum. The best part is it works with any project using JSX or TSX without some complex setup nightmare.

Subframe: AI That Learns How You Design

​Subframe takes a different angle, focusing on a visual editor that not only generates code but actually learns from your design patterns to get better over time.

The key features:

• Visual editor that syncs perfectly with code
• You own the code it generates (not some proprietary format)
• AI that adapts to your specific design preferences
• Drag-and-drop that actually works with responsive design

Early reviews praise how much time it saves and the accuracy of its AI-generated pages. This one’s worth watching.

Paper: Founded by UI Framework Veterans

​Paper is one of the more interesting new entrants, founded by Stephen Haney and Vlad Moroz with Ksenia Kondrashova as part of the core team. Stephen previously co-founded Modulz and Radix UI, two projects that have heavily influenced modern component-based design.

They recently secured a $4.2M seed round led by Accel to build a tool that:

• Imports code components directly onto the design canvas
• Designs with real CSS flexbox without writing code
• Ships assets (including shaders and components) exactly as designed
• Maintains high-fidelity when copying designs as React components

I also dig their approach to AI, using it to assist designers with boilerplate work while keeping humans in control of decision-making.

I’ll be exploring this one a lot more in the future.

Together with Framer​

Framer is doing for design what sound did for movies.

Everytime I see a landing page designed in Framer, like this one from Basedash, I am blown away by the details.

Framer is how you bring professional-grade motion and interactivity to your design work. They’ve created the most intuitive visual editor for publishing your design work straight to the web.

Unlock more modern design capabilities by adding Framer to your stack here.​

Are you ready to learn how Framer can streamline your web development process?

Learn more now

why designing directly with your codebase matters

We've been trying to bridge the design-development gap forever. But these new tools suggest we're close to visual hybrid editors that are finally impressive.

Let's be real about why previous approaches fell short:

1. Design Tools → Implementation: Classic workflow where designers draft it up in Figma for developers to recreate in code. Miscommunication, lost intent, and painful QA cycles become a cost of doing business.
2. Code Generators: Tools that try to generate code from designs but produce output no developer would actually use. The "export to HTML" that gives any self-respecting engineer nightmares.
3. Design Systems: Help but don't solve the problem. Still require translation between design intent and implementation – just with more guardrails and governance.

The new tools pursue a future where we skip all that. By designing with your codebase, you're:

1. Working with real constraints: No more designing something that's technically impossible or impractical. It's there, working. Now.
2. Preserving intent perfectly: What you design is exactly what ships – no translation errors
3. Eliminating handoffs: No more "throw it over the wall" moments where context gets lost
4. Creating production artifacts: Everything you make is a working part of the actual product, not just a set of instructions

If they succeed, this won't be just an incremental improvement – it will create a complete paradigm shift in how we design interfaces.

how this can change your workflow

What does this mean for you as a designer or developer in 2025?

For Designers:

1. No more "is this possible?": You're working with the real code, so you know exactly what's possible
2. Make the damn changes yourself: No waiting weeks for a developer to implement your design
3. Think in components: Design within the constraints of your actual component library
4. New technical context: Understanding props, state, and component logic becomes crucial

For Developers:

1. Less time troubleshooting UI: Less mind-numbing implementation of visual details designers can now handle
2. Focus on complex problems: More time for the challenging code
3. Better component architecture: Tools that enforce good patterns lead to code you don't hate maintaining
4. Actual collaboration: Work alongside designers to solve technical challenges in real-time

For Teams:

1. Ship faster: Changes happen in the actual product, not in design files that sit for weeks
2. Less communication hell: Fewer handoffs mean fewer chances for things to get lost in translation
3. More autonomous work: Both designers and developers can move without constant bottlenecks
4. Experiment with the real thing: Test ideas in the actual product rather than making pretty pictures

the bottom line

After years of broken promises, it appears design and code are finally converging for real.

We now have tools that actually let designers and developers collaborate in the same environment on the same artifacts.

As more teams adopt these approaches, the traditional design-to-development handoff is going to look like a ridiculous waste of time from a bygone era.

Which of these tools have you tried? Hit reply and let me know.

See you next week (and at the Config after party on May 7th),

See you next week,

Tommy

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