Google Updates Stitch and Introduces “Vibe Design” - DTNS 5229  ## Highlights - **Google Brings Conversational Design To Stitch** - Google added Vibe Design to Stitch so designers can describe moods and goals in plain language or voice to generate high-fidelity, clickable UI on an infinite canvas. - Stitch includes an SDK and MCP server for embedding in other tools and a design.md export/import to ease transferring design rules. Transcript: Wind Wendell You've heard of Vibe Coding. Now Google is introducing us to Vibe Design inside Stitch. Jason Howell I think I can figure out what that means. I'm Jason Howell. Wind Wendell I'm Winwood Out. Jason Howell Let's start with what you need to know with a big story. I don't think it's very difficult to figure out what that means. Google has revamped its stitch design tool, bringing Vibe Coding to Vibe Design. Yes, that is using plain language and voice so that users can describe their design goals, their moods, and then hopefully in return, they're going to get some high fidelity clickable User interface UI on an interactive and infinite canvas. So imagine Stitch interviewing or kind of talking back and forth, chatting back and forth with the designer on what they're looking to accomplish with a particular design. And then that followed by a few, you know, maybe it's proposing a few layouts, a few user experience pathways that they can explore, all in an effort to kind of like iterate on that over The course of the conversation, the vibing, if you will. Google is also wiring these capabilities into the agentic ecosystem. Yes, there's an SDK, also an MCP server so that it can appear inside other tools like cursor, like Claude Code, Gemini CLI, that sort of stuff. Design.md markdown file, of course, that makes export and import of the design rules relatively painless and easy. I've never done it before. I can't speak to that myself, but it sounds like it's the sort of thing that makes import and export a lot easier. The update is free within Google Labs, at least for right now. Who knows? Maybe it ends up being part of an ultra subscription somewhere down the line, but Google didn't actually mention that. Just kind of guessing right now, because once it's in Google Labs, it's kind of like they're playing around with it. ([Time 0:03:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/df82510c-2d08-424e-9318-6059da118990)) - **Stitch Announcement Shook Figma Stock** - The Stitch announcement immediately impacted Figma's stock, suggesting market worry about AI-driven design tools disrupting incumbents. - Figma dropped about eight percent on the news before settling near five percent down. Transcript: Jason Howell Has it been elevated into like a prime time thing yet? That remains to be seen. It is important to note that the release of Stitcher or sorry, not Stitcher, Stitch appears to be having an immediate impact on figma at least as relates to its stock performance eight Percent drop on the news now that's settled somewhere around five percent drop um but definitely some direct correlation between the announcement of stitch updates and this like I don't know ai-driven LLM conversation design approach. ([Time 0:05:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1052dd60-86f6-42fa-bd59-0ebeb558c08c)) - **Use Vibe Design As A Design Starting Point** - Use Vibe Design as a starting point to overcome blank-page syndrome, then refine with skilled design work rather than expecting end-to-end replacement. - Wind Wendell notes it helps when teams lack design resources, producing Android designs from iOS specs. Transcript: Jason Howell I work with designers. Yeah, you work with designers. And I know, curious to know your thoughts on this. Wind Wendell Yeah, so I guess, again, as a design, I can't speak from it from the design standpoint and the utility of that. But I do feel like this is a natural progression, obviously, if you're going to vibe code and vibe design. And just like with coding, I feel like, again, as maybe more of a third party observer, there are a lot of things that kind of make sense in this kind of like i guess ability to more direct You know the design part rather than like going into something like figma and laying out component by component and like the manual effort of that i do feel like there's a lot of um like Value in that and just as like a side note like my day job as an android developer and i can't tell you how many projects I have been on that we might get, for example, as a project, as a mobile Project, iOS designs, but never get Android designs. That could just be like a resourcing thing a lot of times, for better or for worse. Some companies just don't have as many designers as they have projects and capacity for, or need rather, for that designer. So a lot of times whenever they can, you know, understandably if they can do iOS and like ask Android folks to wing it or maybe vice versa, we don't know. It's kind of the opposite at PeopleLineHoseJob right now. So I can see like, you know be helpful, right? So in the case where, for example, again, you're strapped on design resources, at least being able to have a little bit of that effort and that, again, manual layout taken out could mean That, hey, I could get Android designs. ([Time 0:05:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b4543ed3-a444-4049-a02c-83b260e40923)) - **Democratization Of Design Echoes Vibe Coding** - Both hosts see Vibe Design empowering non-designers to create initial designs, similar to how Vibe Coding democratized app creation. - Jason Howell and Wind Wendell invited feedback from professional designers about real-world fidelity and export quality. Transcript: Wind Wendell Funny um it's like one thing to lay things out like pixel by pixel on a screen but then there's a lot more programmatic ways that we obviously that we program it so i'm kind of curious the Fidelity of that and also like other tools that you know don't get covered by google whether that's like vss or any other things but i don't i don't know i'm like you know i'm i'm like i'm Like very enthusiastic for the good parts and then kind of like curious about other parts as is i guess usual for me yeah and i mean always with with tools like this people you know very Jason Howell Frequently jump to the oh so now you're replacing designers or something and like when i look at a tool like this i see it as more meanwhile i'm not a designer so you know i would look i think You, let us, let us know what you think if you are a designer, but I think it's, I feel like it's more akin to like blank page syndrome. It's like, I've got an idea for a thing. I might not, you know, as a designer, let's say I might not be using this tool to necessarily create the design top to bottom for me, but here's, here's the Here's the basic of where I want To begin. Give me a nice starting point. And then we can maybe riff on that a little bit, or I can use that as an inspiration for something else, kind of build a little bit of that foundational understanding of what I'm going for. And then I can, as a skilled designer, let's say, do something really concrete and strong with that, either within the confines of what I've been given here or on my own. ([Time 0:07:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/04822c24-0a96-4f90-b007-d2f7db639e42)) - **OpenAI Buying Astral To Bolster Python Tooling** - OpenAI plans to acquire Python tooling startup Astral to integrate tools like Ruff and Formatter into Codex while keeping the platform open source. - The hosts questioned how long OpenAI will sustain open-source commitments after acquisitions. Transcript: Jason Howell There's so much more we need to know today. So much more. So let's get to the briefs. Wind Wendell Well, OpenAI has announced plans to buy Python tooling startup Astral, bringing its team into the Codex group. Astral has strong traction with Python developers through its tools like Ruff, Flinter, and Formatter, which speed up my Python workloads for writing, testing, and debugging code. Astral will continue to build out the open source platform from inside the Codex team. Jason Howell So now this is not necessarily a closed deal yet. This was just kind of announced, so it's still in the works. But yeah, I mean, you know, I've heard of Astral. Again, I'm not a developer. You are. But I feel like you've mentioned, like, you don't work a whole lot with Python directly. Is that right? Or do you? I don't know Python. Wind Wendell Sorry. I know source it's like the most popular pop programming language in like in like the world i actually don't know python that well at all yeah yeah like like linting linting is a terminology Do you can you yes educate us on what linters i'm i the etymology of linters, but linters are basically, they analyze code and let you know when you're doing something that's not so good. So usually we think of lint warnings. Yeah. So it's, again, I don't know the etymology of the term. I think there's something good there, but yeah. And formatters. We use formatters. That's code formatting, so we don't have to individually put in the spaces or tabs. That's like a whole. Oh, that's nice. That that's a spiritual debate by the way uh tabs versus spaces in code um spaces all the way um so yeah i mean these are very common things and it it makes uh it makes sense i'm not exactly Sure how rough works but have being able to automate these tools or even i don't know how it is on python but writing linters, at least for Java and Kotlin, is not the easiest thing. But at the same time, especially day to day, you kind of run into things that you would prefer not to do. And having linters kind of helps your team figure out what their coding standards are. So it definitely is a place where we could use some extra help. I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on the open source platform within OpenAI. Obviously, we're Android people, so I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised because of the relationship between AOSP and Google. But I don't know, what is your read on this from OpenAI? ([Time 0:15:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a52999f9-043f-438c-a9f8-993f959e5b44))