Show HN: Turn Figma into working apps without coding (Designer –> Production)

Show HN: Turn Figma into working apps without coding (Designer –> Production)(builder.io)

11 points by antonoo 1 year ago | 2 comments

Hey HN! Last summer I was struggling to get my Figma designs shipped - stuck waiting for dev bandwidth and trying to hand off every iteration. Got really frustrated and decided to do something about it.

Today we're launching a native integration between Builder.io and Lovable that lets designers directly convert Figma designs into production-ready apps. No code, no BS, just a working app you can iterate on.

How it works:

- Design in Figma (supports Auto-Layout)

- Export through Builder.io's plugin (2 modes: quick or pixel-perfect)

- Opens in Lovable where you can add functionality via prompts

- Connect Supabase for backend/auth/db if needed

- One click deploy to cloudflare

We've been testing this with early users and seeing designers ship entire apps solo in hours instead of weeks. One designer built and deployed a complete employee directory app from their Figma design in an afternoon.

Try it out: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/747985167520967365/bu...

Docs: https://www.builder.io/blog/lovable-builder

Would love feedback from fellow designers and builders. Especially interested in hearing from others who've dealt with design-dev handoff pains, and what parts of your workflow can this help with?

Built by builder.io and Lovable.dev teams. We're around to answer questions!

Henrik501 1 year ago |

Sounds cool, but I have some doubts. Every Figma-to-code tool promises production-ready apps, but in reality, they usually generate a mess that still requires devs to clean up.

A few questions:

- How does it handle complex logic beyond basic CRUD?

- What’s the output quality like? Is it actually maintainable, or will devs end up rewriting everything?

- How flexible is the AI-driven functionality? Natural language sounds nice until you need precise control.

If this truly lets designers build real apps without hitting a wall, that’s impressive. But history says these tools work great for simple prototypes and fall apart on anything non-trivial. Curious to hear from early users—has anyone built something beyond a basic UI?

antonoo 1 year ago | |

I think being skeptical is healthy here. Most Figma-to-code tools just handle UI, but let me share what makes this different.

The secret sauce is combining Builder.io's clean code output (they're the best at Figma conversion) with Lovable + Supabase ability to add real application logic through AI. You're not locked into just what comes from Figma - you can build actual functionality around it.

Re: code quality - it generates proper semantic JSX in TypeScript, and follows best practices. You can check any output yourself and even export the full codebase if needed.

Don't take my word for it though - we have a free tier specifically for testing complex scenarios. What kind of functionality would you want to try? Happy to point you to similar examples or connect you with users who've built production apps.