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Vibe coding is arguably one of many hottest developments in tech proper now, because it displays a wider adoption of AI and pure language prompts for primary code completion (difficult the standard coding mindset that people ought to full downstream duties).
Google is releasing Sew, a brand new experiment from Google Labs, to compete with Microsoft, AWS, and different present end-to-end coding instruments. Now in beta, the platform designs person interfaces (UIs) with one immediate—and a few builders are already gushing.
“Google dropped essentially the most highly effective UI designer on this planet,” Brendan Jowett, proprietor of voice AI firm Inflate AI, posted on X.
The usage of AI in programming and improvement actually isn’t new, however the idea of “vibe coding” — coined by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy earlier this yr — is a more recent idea incorporating generative AI to automate coding duties usually finished manually. This goes past present AI assistants and drag-and-drop no-code and low-code instruments: The main target is on the top consequence, not the journey there.
“You lastly give into the vibes, embrace exponentials and overlook that code even exists,” Karpathy wrote on X.
Prime gamers within the built-in improvement setting (IDE) area embody Windsurf (previously Codeium), Cursor, Replit, Lovable, Bolt, Devin and Aider. Anthropic additionally not too long ago launched its command-line AI agent Claude Code.
Bigger gamers along with Google want to stake their declare, as properly: Amazon Internet Companies (AWS) is providing its Amazon Q Developer AI assistant as an add-on for builders to entry immediately at any level of their coding; Microsoft launched GitHub Copilot agent mode; OpenAI is trying to lengthen its capabilities in vibe coding with its Codex replace and supposed $3 billion buy of Windsurf; and Agentforce is writing about 20% of Salesforce’s code.
Google, for its half, additionally not too long ago launched autonomous coding agent Jules into beta.
Sew builds UIs with a immediate
With Google Sew, customers can designate whether or not they need to construct a dashboard or net or cell app and describe what it ought to seem like (similar to colour palettes or the person expertise they’re going for).
The platform immediately generates HTML, CSS+ and templates with editable elements that devs and non-devs can customise and edit (similar to instructing Sew so as to add a search operate to the house display screen). They’ll then add on to apps or export to Figma.
“Design is an iterative course of, and Sew facilitates this by permitting you to generate a number of variants of your interface,” Google Labs researchers clarify. “Experiment with completely different layouts, elements and kinds to realize the specified feel and appear.”
Customers can select a ‘customary mode’ that runs on Gemini 2.5 Flash or swap to an ‘experimental mode’ that makes use of Gemini Professional and permits customers to add visible parts similar to screenshots, wireframes and sketches to information what the platform generates.
Google additionally plans to launch a characteristic permitting customers to annotate screenshots to make adjustments.
Sew is “meant for fast first drafts, wireframes and MVP-ready frontends,” Jowett notes in his X thread.
Some say layouts are ‘unreal’; others name Bolt superior
Many customers have provided early reward. One famous: “I attempted Sew with a ‘crypto pockets dashboard’ immediate and it nailed the format in below 10 seconds. Unreal.”
X person “God of Immediate” posted: “Truthfully shocked this isn’t getting extra consideration. An actual UI generator backed by Gemini with Figma export? On the spot use-case.”
Nonetheless, others discovered the beta model lower than optimum. Elizabeth Alli of DesignerUp outlined her experiences in a weblog publish: The dev prompted Sew to make an app to assist construct mindfulness habits. She reported that it “missed the mark” on design parts (similar to the colours she was searching for) and she or he wasn’t capable of click on round, because the platform solely generated one display screen (and in subsequent prompts she had problem producing the subsequent logical display screen or another display screen).
Additionally, there aren’t many enhancing choices to select from, and when Alli uploaded a picture from an internet site she designed, she was not impressed by the formatting, typography, colour combos and “dated” shadows and icons.
“I had a lot increased expectations from Google on condition that there are already so many present AI to UI design era instruments available on the market that do that significantly better,” she writes. “Their effort appears half-baked at finest.”
Whereas it’s in beta, it doesn’t have “wherever close to” the polished output of different choices similar to Figma’s First Draft or Uizard’s Autodesigner. “This launch looks like a little bit of a mad sprint to throw their hat into the ring of the AI UI design hype,” Alli notes.
Different early customers agree that Sew may be wonky and underwhelming, that the designs aren’t fairly there but, and that different present instruments are nonetheless superior.
One X person lamented: “I used the identical immediate that I used to generate touchdown pages in different AI instruments which return direct code, however the designs have been so significantly better within the different instruments similar to Bolt.”
It’s clear Google has some kinks to work out if it intends to compete with already entrenched gamers. Nonetheless, it’s early within the vibe coding sport, and customers are desirous to experiment with quite a lot of instruments, so it’ll be fascinating to see Sew’s subsequent iteration.
Attempt Sew out for your self right here.
