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Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use
Hello everyone!
I'm a solo developer who's been doing UI/UX work since 2007. Over the years, I watched design tools evolve from lightweight products into bloated feature-heavy platforms. I kept finding myself using a small amount of the features while the rest just mostly got in the way.
So a few years ago I set out to build a design tool just like I wanted. So I built Vecti with what I actually need: pixel-perfect grid snapping, a performant canvas renderer, shared asset libraries, and export/presentation features. No collaborative whiteboarding. No plugin ecosystem. No enterprise features. Just the design loop.
Four years later, I can proudly show it off. Built and hosted in the EU with European privacy regulations. Free tier available (no credit card, one editor forever).
On privacy: I use some basic analytics (page views, referrers) but zero tracking inside the app itself. No session recordings, no behavior analytics, no third-party scripts beyond the essentials.
If you're a solo designer or small team who wants a tool that stays out of your way, I'd genuinely appreciate your feedback:
https://vecti.com https://vecti.com
Happy to answer questions about the tech stack, architecture decisions, why certain features didn't make the cut, or what's next.
- catapart 8mo agoGodspeed! This is the software design philosophy that I support! As someone building my own design utility, I'm impressed by the quality of yours.
- jasonsb 8mo agoLove the domain name. How did you manage to snag it?
- vecti 8mo agoWhen I started the project I was having a hard time finding a good domain name for the project. Some time later, I came up with this name, and found it for sale on some website for ~800€. I figured it was something I could do, but fortunately I ended up on dynadot's website where it was for sale for a fraction of the price. I think I got lucky while doing all the work :)
- _el1s7 8mo agoThat domain is definitely worth more than $800, good find.
- popalchemist 8mo agoIt's beautiful. Great job. Congrats on having the persistence to see this through.
- vecti 8mo agoThanks a lot. I appreciate it. It’s been quite a journey.
- tarcon 8mo agoHow does it compare to https://github.com/penpot/penpot https://github.com/penpot/penpot?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- vecti 8mo agoThanks for this question. I'm humbled by the comparison. I have been following penpot for a while and I appreciate the work they've been doing. The main difference lies in the rendering engine. Penpot relies on an SVG engine, which limits performance as project complexity grows. Vecti is built on canvas and WebAssembly (the same architecture used by Figma). This gives us raw performance advantages, allowing you to handle complex, heavy design systems without the lag you might experience in SVG-based tools.
- lejalv 8mo agoFor the record, Penpot is about to enter the open beta stage of a canvas, WASM-based renderer.
- mettamage 8mo agoFun submission, will have a look :)
- danielvaughn 8mo agoCongrats on launching. I spent a decade trying to build a design tool. I think I built almost 40 prototypes, to various degrees of completion. Never got to a point where I felt it was good enough to share. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, so kudos to you for sticking with it.
- vecti 8mo agoThank you, and I know exactly what you mean. I myself have rewritten the entire engine ar least three times until I was happy with the performance and the overall outcome. It’s been a long learning experience. As a developer at heart, this project scratched every itch I had from a software engineering perspective :)
- written-beyond 8mo agoHow much of this release was made easier with LLMs?
- uxcolumbo 8mo agoYou should write about this, the gotchas and what you learned how to make things performant. Might drive some traffic.
- alsetmusic 8mo agoYes. This. I read a post-mortem about developing v2 of an app last month because getting insight into the thought process of the builder is super interesting (to me). It's probably not for most people, but it definitely has an audience.
- cobertos 8mo agoAre any of your prototypes published or available to view?
- danielvaughn 8mo agothere are various little things scattered around the github org - a js framework, a treesitter grammar, some old docs, a vscode extension, a vim-style editor, an AI-powered code editor geared towards design, etc. https://github.com/matry https://github.com/matry
- willparks 8mo agoBeautiful design! (makes sense for someone that does UI design). Congrats, I'll check it out.
- falloutx 8mo agoJust tested a few things and I gotta say its fairly easy to pick up and do things. UI does feel like Figma for better or worse. Congrats on completing this project and good luck.
- arkforge 8mo ago[dead]
- contrast 8mo agoMaybe its obvious but I can't tell it this is an image editor, a React builder, an HTML/CSS designer, ...? What does it make?
- TonyStr 8mo agoIt's a wireframing tool akin to figma. You create the design for your website/app there, then hand it over to a programmer who implementd it in html/react/flutter/wpf/etc
- mft_ 8mo agoThis is always the piece that disappoints me when seeing this and other similar tools. Surely it is an obvious next step to offer export to e.g. React, React Native, SwiftUI…? Otherwise you spend days, weeks, months crafting your perfect design down to the pixel, and then someone else has to start again from scratch with a totally different approach. Maybe I’m missing something, but that feels incredibly inefficient and regressive.
- gyomu 8mo ago> your perfect design down to the pixel > Surely it is an obvious next step to offer export to e.g. React, React Native, SwiftUI…? These UI frameworks do not really operate in a "down to the pixel" way and so getting correspondance between a bitmap design and a representation in the UI framework is far from an "obvious next step" (if it were trivial to add such a feature, then of course the developers of these tools would add it). Various concerns that aren't captured in the bitmap design - like how your screens transition from one to another, etc - can dramatically affect how the UI is implemented in a target framework. This is the job of UI engineers. Well, used to be. Now it's vibe code all the way down.
- mft_ 8mo agoSure, I understand the going from a raster design image to a working prototype in one of the frameworks is not easily automated. However, I would’ve thought it would be feasible to create a design tool with this in mind, so the same fundamental design structure could be output either to the internal preview, or (any?) one of the target frameworks.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 8mo ago> I kept finding myself using a small amount of the features while the rest just mostly got in the way. So a few years ago I set out to build a design tool just like I wanted. So I built Vecti with what I actually need... Joel Spolsky said (I'm paraphrasing) that everybody only uses 20% of a given program's features, but the problem is that everyone is using a different 20%, so you can't ship an "unbloated" version and expect it to still work for most people. So it looks like you've built something really cool, but I have to ask what makes you think that the features that are personally important to you are the same features that other potential users need? Since this clearly seems to be something you're trying to create a business out of rather than just a personal hobby project. I'm curious how you went about customer research and market validation for the specific subset of features that you chose to develop?
- nielsbot 8mo agoI think a successful product strategy can be "build something you love, see if others love it too". If that's enough customers, you can judiciously expand out from there. The "fail honestly" method. I think the Apple II is one example of this.
- reactordev 8mo ago>”you can judiciously expand out from there” Which is where the bulk of the other 80% of features come from. It’s a cycle. You start as you describe, you expand, you end up with this enterprise monstrosity, everyone using a different 20%. New tool comes along, you start as you describe…
- nielsbot 8mo agoAssuming it's enterprise software.. then maybe? Hopefully you can afford to say "No" a lot.
- dvt 8mo agoThis is the best way to build products imo. I'm like this, and I've been accused of being very "vibes-based." However, that's a way more tractable way of shipping stuff instead of "well Jim said he wants X, but Amy said she wants Y" so you end up just kind of half-assing features because you think they might get you users, instead of just being passionately all-in into a very defined product vision (which is a very Jobsian way of doing things). It's also easier to run a feedback loop. If you implement Y, but Amy doesn't give you $5 a month, what are you going to do? Knock on her door? Users have no idea what they want half the time, anyway. If you build a product and no one cares, it bruises the ego a bit more, sure, but if you self reflect, you can eek out your own bad assumptions, or bad implementation, or maybe a way to pivot that keeps your product ethos.
- jmkni 8mo agoCongrats on launching, looks cool for sure, I'll certainly check it out! Have you considered adding an MCP server? I've had good results recently using the Figma one just
- cobertos 8mo agoAny chance this will be open-sourced or have a self-hosted version available? I'm interested in modding tools in this space in pursuit of finding weird new ways to create and work with UIs
- uxcolumbo 8mo agoIf you're looking for an open-source and self-host option then you might to checkout https://penpot.app/ https://penpot.app/
- codethief 8mo agoCongrats on your launch! My impression is that this looks quite polished. Can you elaborate on your tech stack?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- vecti 8mo agoThanks! On the frontend: typescript, react, webgl with an emscripten/c++/wasm engine On the backend: Python, postgres, redis
- pawelwentpawel 8mo agoGreat job, congrats on the launch!
- aerzen 8mo agoNice. My gripe with designer apps is that they are online first. I'd want to save designs to files, close to other files of the project. I'd want to open each file in their own window, not in browser tabs.
- aabhay 8mo agoSketch is offline first but has a really stellar online app as well.
- vitaflo 8mo agoPlus you can buy Sketch outright without the subscription.
- gyomu 8mo agoExcept they have a very annoying 2 machine limit and their license manager is a pain to get to. On a weekly basis I am deactivating/reactivating license keys between my home computer, work laptop, travel laptop. Super frustrating. On top of that, their recent redesign comes with a number of boneheaded decisions that would make a Sketch alternative a gift from the heavens above...
- amadeuspagel 8mo agoTrying to login with google I got a social auth error: https://app.vecti.com/dashboard/social-auth-error/ https://app.vecti.com/dashboard/social-auth-error/
- dsnr 8mo agoThanks for reporting, I'm looking into it.
- arkforge 8mo ago[dead]
- ramon156 8mo agoComparing this to penpot, which is free as long as you self-host. Not sure why I would pick this over a self-hostable battle-tested option.
- TonyStr 8mo agoSince this is a commercial product, I'm naturally inclined to compare it to other competing commercial products. Why would I want to use this over figma? The sidepanels and floating toolbar are ripped directly from figma (to the point I would fear a lawsuit). Figma is already a very clean UI, which tries it's best not to shove too many features in your face. Whiteboard, presentations, dev mode are all hidden behind menus. "no plugin support" seems like a very odd thing to flaunt as a feature. Many of the most popular use-cases of figma, such as interactive prototypes, svg creation, html/css exports are all impossible in this tool. Then, there is the problem of this being maintained by a single person. Components are essential to any serious figma user, good svg and image handling is important (svg is buggy in my testing), selection colors is vital, color palette is important. When can users expect to see these features if the maintainer is busy hunting down bugs? This is a technically impressive product, but I struggle to see the market plan. I personally hate distractions in software, I go to great lengths to debloat and disable features to make my computer interactions smoother, yet figma is possibly the last program I would want to clean up.
- popalchemist 8mo agoThere is space for this. The things you list as negatives are positives. Feature parity or similarity to a big competitor? A plus. Single developer? For a certain kind of consumer, a plus.
- johnwheeler 8mo agoPeople ship stuff that doesn't make sense at first blush all the time. But how are they ever supposed to even get into the space if they don't try something? Try to get some customers, see what people want. On day one, he's not saying he's going to compete with Figma. He's just getting it out there. Your comment—You could say you're just asking questions or giving constructive criticism, but it just assumes the negative on so many levels. I can criticize your viewpoint. Why do you think someone should have a product that's ready to compete with Figma on day one? Do you seriously expect him to have an answer for that?
- TonyStr 8mo ago
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- tuhgdetzhh 8mo agoI wait for someone to comment that he could pull it off with an Opus 4.6 agent team in 24h of so.
- thrownaway561 8mo agoI think you're 4 years too late bro. With AI, you can pretty much get 80% of the way there in a minute. I don't understand why anyone nowadays would build anything from scratch.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- augustk 8mo agoWith so many ready meals to choose from I don't understand why anyone nowadays would cook anything from scratch.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoIsn’t this exactly the problem that Joel Spolsky wrote about a quarter of a century ago? https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv-bloatware-and-the-8020-myth/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv... A lot of software developers are seduced by the old “80/20” rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies. Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.
- shawabawa3 8mo agoTrello was a successful product despite having way less than 20% of jira's features
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoAnd there are hundreds if not thousands of Show HNs and YC funded companies that have disappeared in a whimper trying to be the “smaller lightweight version of $x”
- swat535 8mo agoThey can fail for any reason and it’s not always for not having enough features.. MVPs shouldn’t have 100% of features, they need to be small, get feedback and iterate.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoThe old cliche “you only get one chance to make a good first impression”. If you don’t have the features I need when I first look at it, why would I pay for it or think about it again?
- conductr 8mo ago> and you can still sell 80% as many copies. This is the key to that quote. If you resolve to selling less, you can still have a multimillion dollar product. If you resolve to it being a billion dollar product, then yeah you need every thing for everyone.
- th3o6a1d 8mo agoCongrats on launching!
- jjcm 8mo agoEx-Figma. I'd be worried about a lawsuit here, primarily due to the overall app architecture and property panel on the right. While there are differences between your implementation and Figma's, it's close enough that things are very clearly Figma-inspired. There've been a lot of Figma copycats, and Figma does have a track record of successful lawsuits against them. Great work with the backend architecture (a lack of a proper wasm renderer is why penpot will never be competitive), but you're in dangerous territory with the UI.
- vitaflo 8mo agoWasn't Figma's side panel just a ripoff of Sketch's? Always felt that way.
- jjcm 8mo agoHeavily influenced by Sketch's UX for sure. Sketch paved the way for the new wave of design tools. There were some significant architectural differences between the approaches though. Just for comparison, here's a side by side of each: https://image.non.io/940a433a-3c25-4610-88e8-4eec810f2235.webp https://image.non.io/940a433a-3c25-4610-88e8-4eec810f2235.we...
- swat535 8mo agoYou can apply your own logic here as well. “While there are differences between Figma’s implementation and Sketch, it's close enough that things are very clearly Sketch-inspired.” Figma doesn’t have patent on side panels. I don’t think worrying about lawsuits is applicable here. I’m sure Figma will attempt to abuse its power to kill competition regardless. It’s no different than other corporations. Likely EU has better regulations.
- gyomu 8mo ago> I'd be worried about a lawsuit here, primarily due to the overall app architecture and property panel on the right I wouldn't, because such a lawsuit would trivially get dismissed. There are no intellectual claims to be had on app architecture or the design of a property panel, otherwise the whole industry would be a bloodbath.
- NoSalt 8mo agoIt looks really nice, but it is subscription based, so ... no thanks. I refuse to give in to this horrible cycle started by Adobe, lo so many years ago.
- dhumph 8mo agoYour pricing makes it seem like $12 for a year.
- replwoacause 8mo agoCongratulations on shipping a beautiful product
- jonnycoder 8mo agoI like your website design, especially the two-column layout in most sections once I get past the hero image (full size screenshot). I found myself looking at all the images. The downside is that I did not really get any motivation to try it out or really understand how it could help me. I am a backend software engineer so I'm always on the lookout for a way to easily and simply create a professional looking landing page. Therefore I'm always asking the question... is there a template I can choose from and just start filling it in? Just yesterday I found a figma template hosted on figma.site and I used chrome devtools to edit the hero text and navbar and got instant results .. as in I sort of liked it. Typography, spacing, use of color, detailed data presentation (ie bullet points, 2 column layout, etc), and fill-in images are my starting point (as an amateur designer). I could spend hours tweaking a design but I would rather just copy some existing component designs and call it a day. Hope this helps.
- pier25 8mo agoMy biggest issue with Figma and most vector apps is how they handle groups. Only Illustrator seems to offer group isolation. You can double click on a group, enter the group and just edit the elements inside that group. It's such a simple feature but it massively improves the workflow of working with vectors. Never understood why Figma, Sketch, or Affinity Designer never implemented it.
- designerarvid 8mo agoFigma has an isolation mode for individual vectors, press enter while it’s selected. Not what you’re after, but working with groups in Figma can be handy. Try cmd+click to select elements inside groups directly. Then shift+enter to select the parent group. You can do enter again to select all elements in the group. You can cycle selection in the group with tab. All of this works with multi-select, which can be very efficient. IMO working with groups in Figma is much more powerful than illustrator Depends what you are trying to do, of course.
- pier25 8mo agoMaybe I'm missing something but pressing enter with the group selected doesn't really isolate the group. It's the same as double clicking a group. Objects in front of the group are not removed/hidden and you can still select objects outside the group. Even worse, accidentally selecting an object outside the group exits the group. Illustrator has a tool to select objects inside a group too although never use it.
- rkagerer 8mo agoI use some basic analytics (page views, referrers) but zero tracking inside the app itself. No session recordings, no behavior analytics, no third-party scripts beyond the essentials Take my upvote
- RobRivera 8mo agoBravo
- AnonHP 8mo agoI have one observation that doesn’t seem to be reported on this thread. The home page is very heavy, loading several MBs of images. It took half a minute to load completely for me on mobile.
- phmagic 8mo agoCongrats! I tried it and some feedback: 1. Every action seems slower than Figma and Sketch-my main tool 2. Some short cuts didn't seem to to work, like how I can't copy and paste a canvas. It was hard for me to forego muscle memory 3. Is there a way to try it without signing up for an account? Like a sandbox? I tried to delete my account but because I logged in via Google and it requires me to enter a password (I don't know), I can't delete.
- econ 8mo agoI press the button on the website and it wasn't even animated, worse, it didn't have an active state. Not that I like to see that stuff but you did animate the text and feedback does help usability.
- karhuton 8mo agoGreat work. As a European designer, really happy to see competition. Figma is slowly jacking up prices and companies are starting to lean on seats. Figma has pretty much reached the point that they’re inventing features, pushing AI and expanding to other products (figjam, slides), because they’ve reached feature maturity on UI design long time ago and they need to make more money by expanding the other roles (PO, dev) from viewers to paid seats that actually use the tool. So, you have a good fixed target here for Europeans: keep copying UI features from Figma and get European businesses to start switching over. Your pricing is way too high. World’s best UI design tool with all the extra tools? 16€. Your limited offer? 12€! How about: 16€ ANNUAL. ”For the price of one month of Figma, get Vecti for the whole year.” - there’s a promotion text for the website too. P.s. My list of must haves before I could consider switching: - auto layout (w/ slots if possible!!) - components - very simple prototyping with click & scroll support Prototyping is required for user testing, so I’d have to buy software for that if I’d use yours. Edit: I want to follow your progress. Could you have a mailing list where you update your feature implementation progress - let’s say once a month?
- vecti 8mo agoHi karhuton, Thanks for your honest and thoughtful feedback. Re: the features that you mentioned - these are definitely on my list. I thought that getting the product out there sooner was preferable to waiting longer at this stage. But I fully resonate with you, and I’m working on releasing them shortly. Re: pricing, this is something I gave a lot of thought to, and I came to the conclusion that instead of participating in a race to the bottom, I prefer that the paying customers really see value in my product. I would like to offer a more generous free plan and find the right niche in the design field for those paying customers. With this in mind, here’s a 50% discount code for any plan, for this community and anyone who would like to support this project: HN50 Re: the mailing list, it’s a great idea. I’ll implement a subscription list soon for the people who are interested. In the meantime, you can send me an email at contact@vecti.com with your email, and you will be the first person to get notified of the product progress.
- __natty__ 8mo ago
- averrous 8mo agoAny tips for ensuring quality across features when you working with urself?
- techpulse_x 8mo ago[flagged]
- joduplessis 8mo agoA Figma competitor is a really good thing - many people are waiting to jump ship for a decent competitor. However, for the sake of longevity & lawsuits, maybe tweak the UI a little bit. Just to make it not look exactly like Figma. Well done though!
- drcongo 8mo agoI have a rolling doc of the various US tech we're gradually untangling ourselves from, just added this to the design section - looks really interesting.
- kevintayong 8mo agoThanks for sharing! Reminds me of Figma. Btw, your LinkedIn and Email icons on the footer are not linked.
- alluro2 8mo agoLooks great and congrats on building and shipping a well-rounded and usable product. Looking forward to trying it out this evening.
- xyortuc 8mo agoHi, that's a great tool. It gave me great inspiration, I am working on my tool now. Let's see how it goes
- grougnax 8mo agoWhy Webassembly for the renderer? Why not just JS? Nowadays performance is similar if not better than native
- ranger_danger 8mo agoReminds me of https://bootstrapstudio.io/ https://bootstrapstudio.io/
- haute_cuisine 8mo agoAmazing work! Congrats on the launch. I’ll definitely give it a try