We keep wondering why design to code still feels this broken
As a team building products ourselves, there’s one thing that has consistently drained more energy than we’d like to admit: the handoff.
You probably know the cycle too.
Design looks clean.
Dev starts building.
And then the slow drift begins. The spacing is off, the layout shifts, the components don't quite match.
No one is wrong, but somehow everything slips.
It's a small problem on paper, but it grows quietly until it eats entire days.
And honestly, there was a moment where we had to ask ourselves:
Are we the only ones who are tired of pretending this is fine?
Out of that frustration came a simple question we couldn't shake:
Why do our tools treat design and code like two separate worlds?
Sketchflow didn’t start as a grand vision.
It started because the gap between "looks right" and "built right" kept wearing us down.
We were tired of translating, tired of reconstructing layouts from static images, tired of the constant negotiation between design intent and implementation reality.
So we tried something different:
What if the design starts in the same language the product ends up in?
That's why Sketchflow's foundation is HTML.
Not because it's trendy, but because it's honest.
It's the language everything eventually converges to anyway.
We're still figuring things out — who truly needs this, whether it solves enough pain, and whether this direction actually resonates beyond our own workflow.
But if you've ever felt that familiar friction, the "why is this still so hard?" kind. We’d genuinely love to hear how your team handles it. Chances are, we're not the only ones who got tired of pretending the handoff process is okay.
Love this perspective. The handoff pain is real, and most teams just accept it as part of the workflow. Building on HTML from the start feels like a practical move that keeps design and implementation aligned. Curious to see how this approach evolves as more teams try it out.
Handoff pain feels "normal" only because everyone's lived with it for too long. Starting in HTML isn't perfect, but removing that translation layer already cuts a lot of drift for us. We're still learning how far this approach can go.
This hits home. That "slow drift" cost me weeks (and sanity) until I realized it wasn't a design or dev problem — it was a *systems* problem.
I started creating "single source of truth" brand kits and component libraries that both design and dev could follow. No more interpretation gaps, no more drift.
Turned those systems into reusable templates and cut handoff time by 70%.
It's crazy how much energy gets freed up when you systemize the small stuff.
(Sound familiar? This is why I now build systems for a living.)
Totally resonates. The moment you treat drift as a system gap instead of a people gap, everything changes. Shared foundations and repeatable patterns do most of the heavy lifting.
Thanks for sharing this with us. As a UI designer, I am always looking for an effective tool to help me design interfaces and generate related code, so I can finish the whole project all by myself. I will try it now!
Thank you! With more detailed prompts, you can get well-designed interfaces in Sketchflow :)
I just tried your product and I'm really impressed. It feels super polished, and the whole flow is smoother than I expected. I'll admit I was a bit overwhelmed at first when I got a 13-page workflow from a small prompt, but once I zoomed in and understood how everything was laid out, it clicked pretty fast.
I also love that I can dive into individual elements of the generated UI and tweak them like I'm working in Figma, it makes the designs feel genuinely editable instead of being locked behind generated code like most other AI tools.
Lastly, being able to select a single component and have the assistant update just that one part, my gawd. That's a killer interaction, and I honestly haven't seen another tool do it this well. Really excited to see where you take this!
Thank you for trying it out! We are currently working on improving mobile code generation and backend support. Genuinely hope that future updates will bring you an even better, surprising experience with Sketchflow.