Why UI prototyping tools still fall short for collaborative, reusable development?
In the fast-evolving world of AI-assisted development, tools like Vercel v0 and Cursor have promised to revolutionize how we build software. They offer rapid prototyping, AI-generated code, and seamless deployment pipelines. But beneath the surface, many developers—especially those building for teams or open ecosystems—are hitting frustrating roadblocks.
Let’s unpack the core problems and explore what a better future might look like.
Problem 1: Components Aren’t Truly Reusable
One of the biggest promises of tools like v0 is the ability to generate UI components quickly. But here’s the catch: these components are often:
- Tightly coupled to the tool’s internal structure (e.g., shadcn/ui + Tailwind CSS in v0)
- Lacking documentation or context for others to understand or adapt
- Not easily portable across projects or frameworks
This makes it hard to share components with collaborators or work in design system. What should be a reusable asset becomes a one-off artifact locked into a specific stack. This is a major problem in productivity since everyone needs to built the same UI over and over to test any small idea.
Problem 2: Context Loss and Chat History Deletion
Vercel V0, in particular, has been praised for its AI pair-programming experience. I was once making a UI from Morning till afternoon and It suddenly showed 'Run time error' and asked me to let vercel fix this. Once I said yes it generated a completly different UI and all the work I did from morning got lost. This is a major issue of lossing of context.
- Chat history sometimes disappears, especially after run time error.
- AI forgets previous instructions, even within the same session. In Vercel they most of the time I found they don't rememebr the UI chnages I did for previous version and generate a completly new version.
- No persistent memory of project-specific decisions, making long-term collaboration difficult
This is especially painful when you're iterating on a complex component or debugging a tricky issue. You end up repeating yourself—or worse, losing valuable insights.
Problem 3: Spoon feeding UI styling for large UI surface
In my experience Vercel is really bad at recreating Large UI surface. You almost need to go and change every component to make it feel like a crafted expereince.
Things I love about about these tools
Even with all this draw backs their are few things these tools are doing really well.
- Making it easier for us to test ideas.
- These tools are really good at generating small specific componenents.
- We can test ccomplex interection like drag and drop.
- My favourite among this is generating complex keyboarding and accessibility feature. Even screen reader spec and be done well with Vercel V0.
- Animations: You can get some complex animation done in these tools.
Potential Solutions
Here’s what the next generation of tools—or improvements to existing ones—should focus on:
1. True Component Portability
- Export components in framework-agnostic formats (e.g. Storybook-ready)
- Include metadata, usage examples, and prop documentation
- Allow publishing to shared registries or internal design systems
2. Persistent, Project-Aware Memory
- Store chat history and decisions per project, not per session
- Enable tagging or bookmarking of key conversations
- Let users “pin” context that should persist across sessions
3. Granular level control of UI, style guide and duplication
- Unless we get granular level of control over UI components these tools are not reliable for shipping crafted experience.
- It should allow us to design style guide for specific projects.
- It needs to allow for duplication of a single screen or component to varous projects.
4. Better Collaboration Features
- Shared workspaces with versioned component libraries
- Inline comments and feedback threads
- Role-based access and permissions for teams
