What are PMs using for quick wireframes and mockups in 2026?
Spent too long either waiting on designers for mockups or fumbling through Figma for something that should take an hour, neither works when you need to move fast on stakeholder presentations or engineering handoffs Tried a few options, Balsamiq is good for…
Spent too long either waiting on designers for mockups or fumbling through Figma for something that should take an hour, neither works when you need to move fast on stakeholder presentations or engineering handoffs Tried a few options, Balsamiq is good for low-fi wireframes but the output looks rough for anything beyond internal use, Figma is the obvious answer but the learning curve is brutal if you're not designing every day, Miro works for flows but not actual screen mockups For higher fidelity mockups SleekDesign, sleek fills the gap, around $20/month, describe the screen and get complete UI back in minutes, good enough for stakeholder presentations and engineering reference without needing design skills. Claude handles copy and content direction well alongside it if you need placeholder text or flow logic thought through Cons worth knowing, less control than Figma for pixel-precise work, and anything requiring a complex custom component hits its limits pretty quick, better for early stage product exploration than final handoff specs What's everyone using for this, feels like the PM toolstack for rapid mockups is still pretty fragmented compared to how good the engineering and analytics tools have gotten
Collected discussion
Designers
I may be the only one it doesbt work properly lmaoo
i do, still too many of them, need to find the best!
Lovable and security tho...
How good is Antigravity??
What’s wrong with Figma Make? I like that I can drop screens in Figma Classic and fine tune. Our front end guys have even started using some of the code it writes. Edit: I usually set it to the latest Claude model since I’ve been slow lately and not using it as much. When they first rolled it out, there was no token limit even for the most advanced model. Those were the days….
I use stitch, Antigravity, opencode
Lots of people use lovable quad code, figma. For proof of concept I usually just let Claude do its thing. For more detailed stuff, I'll usually include a markdown file and maybe a literal picture of something I draw on paper.
Claude code, works great with a design framework
Claude Design or Figma Make
Haven't you heard? No one does wireframes anymore. We jump straight to polished AI vibe coded prototypes and then mistake usability feedback for willingness to pay.
AI. Why would you not use Ai did this these days. Claude in one of its many forms works. Claude design is very capable. Figma and figma makes AI features keep getting better. Google stitch is another option. There are probably a ton more. Why use manual tool now for this?
Claude design is really good to get started on basic ideas
I use pen, paper, a protractor and a ruler
Wireframes?! What is this 2020? Everyone is building high fidelity clickable designs.
We can use cursor if we have access to check out the right repo, and Claude if it's an unrelated new thing with no need for existing code. At my old job we had an in house mockup tool
Miro / Mural / Figjam or whatever that whiteboardy thing in Confluence is called. Basic shapes and then stick'em together. For anything more advanced, annotated screenshots, Mockups made by loveable, Cowork, Codex
LLMs with a proper design skill and html is the only way to go these days imo.
I use draw.io and it's served me well in getting ideas across.
I use OneNote and a cheap chinese brand graphics tablet, lol. Before I used Balsamiq.
Functional protoype - cursor Just a basic clickable user flow (pre designers) - figma make.
Figjam and into Figma is I need something a little smarter. I do the majority in Figjam though as the process tends to be collaborative with the content designer.
Quick lo-fi wireframes? Pen & paper. Or a white board.
Copilot bc that’s all we have but you can produce mock up pretty quickly quickly
Most of the time it's Whimsical, especially when I have an experience in mind but want to explore a couple variations. I built a CC Skill that turns Whimsical wireframes and connectors into ShadCN prototypes, so Ill run that skill and build functionality on top of that. But if I know exactly what experience I want, I just use Monologue to brain dump ideas then throw that into CC with a couple screenshots and spit out an HTML/CSS/JS prototype.