If you take the time to learn about current design trends, you can hardly avoid AI. Designing vibes have become a distinct field with new specialized tools constantly emerging, and many people are always willing to try them if they are passionate about design but don't really have a programming background. So when a new tool appears that promises to replace the role of the developer, they are very excited.
Subframes are the latest tool to catch the eye as people look for an alternative to familiar tools. Subframes turn out to be quite capable. They're not just a tool for converting text into a standard user interface.
Subframe is a 2-in-1 tool.
UI design is on top, UI programming is on the bottom.
Subframes aren't just a UI design tool like Claude Design or Stitch, where you type a prompt and get a mockup, nor are they really UI programming tools like Replit or Bolt, where the primary goal is to release an application. They lie somewhere in between. You design visually, but the output is the actual React and Tailwind code used in the production environment, residing in the codebase if you choose to synchronize.
However, the philosophy behind it is sound. Subframe's output code is deterministic, so the LLM won't misinterpret your design when exporting the file, and the components reside within your own codebase instead of being locked into a proprietary format. This tool is built with deep understanding of developer tools, clearly designed to avoid the often-sloppy "AI machine" approach.
There are many ways to create a design.
When you first open a Subframe, admittedly, things are a bit confusing. There are several different places to enter prompts, and they all work, but they relate to the rest of the application in different ways, and it takes a while to figure them out. There's an Ask AI button at the top of the canvas, which is the main button. There's a separate Prompt mode from the Design mode at the top. There's also an inline prompt that appears at the bottom when you select an element, allowing you to edit only that part. And new projects start with a kind of home page that has its own input box.
The results were really good. It returned two variations, a Bottom Sheet version and a Centered Stack version, and both interpreted the request reasonably well. The pills were displayed as actual components, not text disguised as pills, and it added a small, unsolicited "ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL" status indicator that was very fitting for a home workspace. Having two variations is part of how Subframe works in general. Each prompt generates alternatives that you can compare side-by-side. You can combine elements between them, something only Subframe does at this scale. With the free plan, you get two variations per creation; paid users get four.
AI is just a small part of what Subframe can do.
The entire design and development process is available.
After the AI finishes its work, you can actually click on the design and manually edit it, which sounds obvious but isn't the case for most similar tools. Click on any element and the right-hand panel will display a full range of design options, sizing with Hug/Fill/Exact for both axes, margin spacing divided by edge, layout direction, spacing between elements, background, borders, corner radii, shadows, typography, etc. This is a true editor. You also have an Insert panel with frames, shapes, text, icons, input fields, dividers, all the usual basic elements, and a Layers panel on the left showing the full nested structure.
What's really great is what happens when AI and manual design combine. After the design is created, you can click on an individual element and request a change only on that part, instead of recreating the entire screen. So, if the button color is wrong, you just ask the AI to fix that button, without going through the whole re-creation process. It's the same idea that Stitch handles with its Direct Edit tool, and this is the direction all these tools are heading.
Integrating the developer workflow is another important aspect. Subframe has a command-line interface (CLI) that you can run with the `npx @subframe/cli sync` command to pull components directly into your project's file system. It also has an MCP server, meaning you can connect AI programming tools like Cursor and Claude Code via MCP and Skills, synchronize components, export code for pages, and create new design suggestions directly from your IDE with the codebase context. There are skill agents named `/subframe:design` and `/subframe:develop` that allow your programming agent to retrieve the design and implement it in the codebase. If you're a hybrid of design and development, this is probably the most outstanding feature for you.