When PMs should edit visually vs code

Today’s episode

AI prototyping tools are redefining what it means to be a PM.

Bolt went from 0 to $40M ARR in 4.5 months. Lovable hit $17M ARR in 3 months. Every forward-thinking product team is starting to prototype earlier, faster, and at higher fidelity than ever before.

But most PMs are using these tools wrong.

They open Bolt or Lovable, type a vague prompt, get something that looks decent, show it around, and move on. No problem space work. No divergent solutions. No user testing. The prototype dies in a Slack thread and nothing changes.

In this episode, we built a LinkedIn sentiment analysis feature from scratch - live - to walk you through the complete workflow. From blank page to multi-page, clickable, high-fidelity prototype. We covered when to prototype, how to prompt, when to go high fidelity, and how to hand off to engineers with zero open questions.

If you watch, you’ll also learn why your PRD and prototype need to live together - and why that combination is the new standard for forward-thinking PMs.

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Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.

Brought to you by:

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* Mobbin: Discover real-world design inspiration

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Key Takeaways:

1. AI prototyping doesn't replace problem space work - it accelerates solution space work. Before opening any prototyping tool, lock down the problem, the user story, and the rough shape of the solution. If you can't write all three in one paragraph, you're not ready.

2. Always start from your design system, not a blank page - Drop a screenshot of your existing product and ask the tool to recreate it. Save that as a team template. Every prototype you build from that point looks like it belongs in the product.

3. Build 3 to 4 divergent solutions before choosing one - The entire point of AI prototyping is that building a second and third version costs almost nothing now. We built two versions of the sentiment analysis feature live. Neither was perfect. Both were useful. That comparison is the point.

4. Use visual editing for fine-tuning, not prompting - Once you've picked the strongest direction, switch to direct visual editing. Move elements, match colours with the eyedropper, adjust spacing. It's faster because the result is immediate.

5. Single-page prototypes miss too much - Build the full end-to-end flow. The moment you start connecting pages, edge cases surface automatically. We found two edge cases in minutes that would have cost engineering time in sprint.

6. Prompt clarity beats prompt engineering - Any ambiguity in your prompt will get exploited statistically. Before running a complex prompt, paste it into a separate chat and ask it to find the contradictions. Fix those first.

7. Use discuss mode before building anything major - Don't ask the AI if it can do something. That always gets a yes. Ask what it thinks the right approach is. The answer is far more honest and useful.

8. High fidelity is for selling and usability testing - Low fidelity is for team exploration. Any prototype going in front of users needs to feel real, otherwise you get feedback about the roughness, not the experience.

9. The PRD and prototype should live together - The PRD covers edge cases, empty states, error conditions. The prototype covers the 90% flows. Together they leave zero open questions for engineers. If someone reads both and still has a question, something is missing.

10. The prototype is already standard code - A functional prototype built in Dazzle is a full server-side and client-side application. Download the project folder, drop it next to the production codebase, and tell Cursor to copy the interaction. Most of the implementation gets handled automatically.

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Related content

Newsletters

* Product Requirements Documents (PRDs): a modern guide

* Ultimate guide to AI prototyping tools (Lovable, Bolt, Replit, v0)

* Your guide to AI product strategy

* AI PRDs: everything you need to know

* AI agents: the ultimate guide for PMs

Podcasts

* The most powerful AI workflow for PMs with Frank Lee

* How to engineer delight into AI products with Nazarin Shenel

* AI prototyping tools with Eric Simons, CEO of Bolt

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