Using Your Lovable or Cursor Prototype as a Design Brief

An AI-built prototype is a useful brief because it shows, in working form, what you want the product to do. It is not the design. To use it well, extract the job it is meant to do, mark what to keep and what to cut, note what you could not get the tool to do, and hand a designer the prototype along with those decisions. Then the designer starts from your intent and not from a blank page.

Founders sometimes feel they must choose: keep the prototype and live with how it looks, or throw it away and start again. There is a third option. Treat it as evidence of what you want, and design the product from there.

What does a prototype tell a designer?

• The features you think the product needs.

• The screens you imagined, in roughly the order you imagined them.

• The data and rules you had to define to make it run.

• Where you got stuck: things you asked the tool for several times.

It does not tell them which of those features matter, how the pieces should connect, or what the product should feel like. Those are the design decisions.

How do you turn it into a brief?

1. Write the job in one sentence. When [situation], [person] needs to [progress], so they can [outcome]. We explain how in why your MVP needs a clearer job.

2. List every screen and feature. Take a screenshot of each and name it.

3. Mark each one. Needed for the job, needed to test your assumption, or "the tool added it".

4. Note the rough edges. Where it confused you, where you could not get what you wanted, where the tool made a choice you disliked.

5. Record who the first user is and how they will find the app.

6. Share access. A link to the prototype, the screenshots and the list.

What can go wrong if you skip this?

Zeno, an addiction-recovery companion, started with concepts and wireframes the client had generated with AI. The screens were flat and overloaded, with cold jargon like "Biometric Feedback" that read as an interrogation to a vulnerable user. The work was to turn that draft into a supportive product: a 15-second daily check-in, and a decision to keep the relapse action out of the main dashboard so it stays a positive space. The idea in the draft was real. What it lacked were the product decisions about tone, cognitive load and what a user should see first.

What should you decide before handing it over?

• What the first release must do, and what waits.

• Who you are designing for first.

• Which parts of the prototype are fixed, such as integrations or data, and which are open.

• Whether the code will be reused or rebuilt. This changes how a designer hands work back.

What does a designer give back?

A defined scope, a coherent structure, a design system and tested flows, in files your developers or the AI tool's code can follow. That is the same package we describe in what a development-ready handoff includes. How it splits from the build is covered in MVP design vs MVP development.

What to do this week

1. Screenshot every screen in your prototype.

2. Write the product's job in one sentence.

3. Mark each screen "needed", "test" or "added by the tool".

4. Write three things you could not get the tool to do.

FAQ

Do I have to throw away the code?

Not necessarily. Whether it is reused depends on how it was built. A developer should review it before you decide.

Will a designer be offended by a prototype?

A good one will be glad to have it. It is more informative than a written brief.

Should I keep adding to the prototype while the designer works?

Better not. Freeze it as the reference and agree changes through the design, or the two will drift apart.

If you have an AI-built prototype and are not sure what to fix first, book a free 30-minute Product Diagnosis, or see how we approach product design for startups.