Some aha moments using AI
Looking back over the last few months, there are a handful of small moments where something clicked and the way I work shifted. None of them felt like a big deal in isolation, but together they've reshaped my prototyping process.
01 Prototypes that actually do the thing
The first one was a global search prototype I built in Figma Make around November. Instead of faking results with static data, I wired it up so the search input actually searched. Typing a cluster name returned matching clusters, filters narrowed them, empty states fired correctly. It was the first time a prototype I’d built behaved like the real product instead of a clickable approximation. Suddenly I could test the interaction, not just the screens.
02 Figma Make as a starting point, not the destination
For the MCP connection flow, I downloaded the code from a Figma Make prototype and kept iterating on it in Claude Code. That broke the ceiling on what Figma Make alone could do. I could swap in real production components, hook up real data shapes, and keep refining well past where the Figma Make canvas tapped out. Figma Make went from “the tool I’m prototyping in” to “a fast way to start.”
03 Collaboration tools inside the prototype
Adding annotations, spotlights, and comments directly into the prototypes changed hand-off. Reviewers can see what’s new vs. existing, get guided through a flow, and leave feedback on a specific screen without leaving the page. It sounds small but it collapsed a lot of back-and-forth that used to happen in Slack threads and Figma comments.
04 Managing a Figma library from the terminal
The first time I used Claude Code to create and manage a Figma design library, and then push style changes across screens, felt like a different kind of unlock. The tedious parts of design system maintenance (renaming tokens, propagating a color change, updating components across files) became something I could just describe.
05 Iterating on a prototype with a PM, in a real repo
The navigation redesign was the first time I pushed a prototype to a shared GitHub repo and iterated on it with a PM. We each cloned it, made our own versions, and ended up with something like 15 variants between us before converging. It felt more like pairing on code than reviewing mockups, and the output was a real artifact both of us had shaped.
None of these moments were planned. Each one just happened and then I couldn’t go back to working the way I had before.