SketchMason

SketchMason: draw labelled boxes, get a UI design. No account on

[Dx @danieldxdere]

i kept seeing these Claude Opus 5.5 motion design videos all over X, so obviously I had to try it with SketchMason

I gave Claude one prompt:

“make a 15-second motion graphics showreel for SketchMason. go all out.”

- no After Effects.
- no video model.

it basically wrote the entire film in code.

15 seconds = 900 frames at 60fps.

Claude wrote roughly 5,000 lines, rendered every frame in headless Chrome, synced the whole thing to a 128 BPM timeline, generated its own soundtrack from raw waveforms, added motion blur, film grain, colour fringing, and even checked whether the beats were landing on the correct frames.

the crazier part?

it reviewed its own render.

it generated contact sheets, looked at them and started fixing things a motion designer would notice:

- pen tip was outside the frame
- words were colliding
- end card was too low
- one 3D shot had too much empty space

final render used 8 Chrome instances in parallel feeding ffmpeg and took around 7.5 minutes.

but my favourite part is that the video actually tells the SketchMason story:

rough pencil sketch to finished interface.

AI generating videos is cool

AI writing an entire motion design system, rendering it, testing it and critiquing its own output feels like something else entirely.

anyway, here’s what it made

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

one sketch shouldn’t give you one screen
it should give you a system

- same visual language
- multiple screens
- one flow you can keep editing

that’s the direction we’re building SketchMason toward

[Dx @danieldxdere]

7 days since I launched SketchMason

I had 9 people on the waitlist before launch. I warmed them up, sent everyone the launch message, and thought at least a decent number would come through

1 signed up on launch day

Right now SketchMason has 7 accounts. One of them is me.

0 paying customers
Instagram has 3 followers
Tiktok has 0 followers

and I’ve been posting on TikTok and Instagram and nothing has landing yet (yeah i think i need more time on this )

X has been slow too, but almost every useful conversation, piece of feedback and signup I’ve gotten has come from here

I built SketchMason alone in 27 days and launched it on my 21st birthday. Before launch I genuinely thought building the product was going to be the hard part.

lol.

Turns out I know how to build. Getting strangers to care is the part I’m learning from scratch

But there’s one number I actually like 6 people created accounts and tried something I built from zero

A week ago that number was 0.

I’m not going to call that traction yet, but it’s enough signal to keep going

Now I’m trying to figure out what the actual bottleneck is: the product, the positioning, or distribution?

If you were in my position, which one would you attack first?

https://t.co/2O6ToZxNxy

day 7 still building

[Dx @danieldxdere]

one user asked me to add Google sign in.

that one DM ended up exposing 2 other things i shipped badly

the verification email was taking too long, and some Resend emails were landing in spam.

worse, SketchMason didn’t even tell users to check spam.

so i added Google sign in

then while testing the auth flow, i opened settings and realized i’d also shipped the old placeholder settings page

what was supposed to be one small fix turned into:

- Google sign in
- better verification messaging
- rebuilt account settings
- plans and billing
- credit top ups
- billing history
- profile controls

all because one person said the code was taking too long, this is probably the biggest thing i’m learning from having real users

they don’t always give you a roadmap

sometimes they just point at one annoying thing and you find 5 more things you should’ve fixed already

shipped the fixes today

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

generating a good UI from a sketch is only half the job.

you still need to be able to change the text, spacing, layout, components, positioning, all without starting over

that’s why editing is becoming a big part of SketchMason

[Dx @danieldxdere]

3 users in 3 days.

one new user a day

is that growth? probably too early to call it that, but it is signal.

funny part is i’m still one of the heaviest users of my own product. anthropic just warned me about my credit usage because i keep generating UIs and comparing them against stuff on @awwwards

i’m trying to solve the boring details AI usually guesses the spacing, widths, grid gaps, nav rhythm. the things nobody mentions in the prompt but everyone notices when they’re wrong

- every user teaches me something
- every generation costs me something
- every day the product gets a little less sloppy.

marketing gets people through the door. product quality decides whether they stay

marc lou did over $100k in a couple days.

i’m at 3 users in 3 days, different stage of the graph

still moving right

[Dx @danieldxdere]

Introduction to SketchMason

build the whole flow with SketchMason draw the UI keep every screen consistent

From dashboard to checkout, each new screen stays in the same design system.

2 free generations. no card needed

https://t.co/7ODa24aKOE

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

Introducing SketchMason

Draw the UI | Skip the prompt fight.

Turn a rough sketch into a finished interface, then keep the whole flow in the same design

2 free generations. no card needed

https://t.co/2WrF3EI6Zi

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

@sanketdattta appreciate this thanks

honestly the constraints have probably helped more than they hurt. forced me to keep the product simple and actually ship it.

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

we are live

[Dx @danieldxdere]

turned 21 today

also shipping my first real SaaS

SketchMason turns a rough hand-drawn sketch into a finished interface.

- draw the layout.
- get the design.
- export the HTML.

built it alone, bootstrapped, no team, no funding.
you get 2 free generations, no card needed

https://t.co/2O6ToZxfI0

pretty good way to start 21 :)

[Dx @danieldxdere]

this post was 2023

five hours after GPT-4 Vision shipped, @sawyerhood drew a UI, turned it into HTML and wrote:

“the future is bright.”

3 years later the future was actually bright

i’ve been building the version i wanted back then

- rough sketch into full UI flow
- desktop + mobile
- same design across every page
- HTML or Next.js export

he was right
SketchMason launches tomorrow

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

1 day left

tomorrow i finally open sketchmason.

draw the ui you have in your head. let mason turn it into something you can actually ship.

waitlist closes when we launch

https://t.co/2WrF3EI6Zi

[Dx @danieldxdere]

3 days.

been building sketchmason around one idea:

if you can draw the ui, you shouldn’t have to explain it to an AI in 20 different ways

launching this week

[Dx @danieldxdere]

3 days.

been building sketchmason around one idea:

if you can draw the ui, you shouldn’t have to explain it to an AI in 20 different ways

launching this week

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

this is the whole bet

you shouldn’t need to explain a ui 20 times if you can just draw it

early access opens this week.

[Dx @danieldxdere]

i think prompting ui is backwards
if you can draw it, you should be able to build it.

- box for a card
- line for a heading
- circle for an avatar.

sketchmason turns the rough sketch into the finished interface.

opening access this week

who wants in first?

[Dx @danieldxdere]

hand-drawn ui usually means the AI looks at your sketch, then does whatever it wanted anyway.

this one didn’t, every box i drew became a section on the page, in the same order

the reference image only decided the look

sketch means layout
image mean staste

[Dx @danieldxdere]

What if you could sketch your UI - instead of prompting it?

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

draw something ugly and see what comes back.

https://t.co/pfbkhMnozR

you can also remix anything on explore.

[SketchMason @usesketchmason]

prompts are optional now

draw the layout.

we’ll make it look like you meant it.

[Dx @danieldxdere]

rough rectangles in, finished interfaces out.

drawing the layout takes 10 seconds.

making it actually look designed is the part that eats the afternoon.

that’s what i built @usesketchmason for sketch the screen and mason designs it

one free generation a day. no card. no account.

[Dx @danieldxdere]

free week is live

https://t.co/i6qr9sfZKJ

rules:

- sketch or draw a ui
- don’t make it pretty
- upload it and see what sketchmason does

pretty sketches aren’t the point

send me the ugly ones.