Vibe coding in Anima’s Playground10 min read

Ever wish you could tweak your design and see it running instantly, without setting up a full dev environment? That’s exactly the idea behind vibe coding and Anima’s new Playground. In today’s fast-changing design landscape, the lines between design and development are blurring.

Designers are no longer confined to static mockups – with the right tools, they can jump into working code without becoming full-fledged developers. Anima’s Playground is built for this new workflow. It empowers designers to experiment quickly, turn visual ideas into code in seconds, and collaborate with developers more easily than ever, all in a casual yet professional sandbox environment.

What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding is a term for letting an AI do the coding while you focus on the creative “vibe” of your app. In other words, an AI agent writes the code for you, so you don’t even have to look at the code – just the results.

You describe what you want in natural language (think of it like chatting with a creative coding assistant), and the AI builds or tweaks the app accordingly. This means you can focus on the UX, the flow, and the feel of your product without worrying about syntax or framework quirks. It’s a bit like having a developer pair-programming with you, except the developer is an AI that understands your design intentions. The outcome? You get to design by doing, seeing real functionality come to life while staying in your creative zone.

Imagine simply telling the AI, “Add dark mode as default,” and seeing your app update with a dark theme. That’s vibe coding in action – you express the idea, and the code appears. Anima’s Playground lets you achieve this without ever leaving the comfort of a visual interface or digging into a setup. The focus stays on creation and the user experience, while the heavy lifting of code is handled behind the scenes.​

From Figma to code in seconds (no setup required)

For many designers, the journey starts in Figma. The Playground is built to take you from a static Figma design to a live, working prototype with zero setup friction. Paste a Figma design link into Anima’s Playground, and you can instantly generate a working application – no need to even open Figma or install a plugin if you don’t want to​.`

In a matter of seconds, your canvas design turns into actual code running in the browser, complete with a live preview. Anima’s platform understands both design and code, so it translates your pixel-perfect layout into a real frontend automatically​.

This means you skip the tedious handoff stage and jump straight into interacting with your design as a real product. What’s more, you don’t need any local development environment. The Playground runs entirely in your browser, powered by WebContainers tech that compiles and runs code on the fly​.

No need to set up Node, clone a repo, or configure build tools – it’s all handled under the hood. For a designer, this is liberating: you get to play with a coded version of your design without calling a developer or wrestling with setup. It’s as if your Figma file suddenly came alive, and you can now touch and test it in real time.

Design, code, and iterate with real-time feedback

One of the most exciting aspects of Anima’s Playground is the real-time feedback loop it offers. The moment your design is running in Playground, you can interact with it like a real app – click buttons, navigate screens, and see animations. If something isn’t quite right, you can adjust it on the spot and see the changes immediately. No waiting for a compile or a deploy; every tweak reflects instantly in the live preview.

“You can ask the AI-assistant to “make the tab items work” or even “change the header color to HEX value #EBF2FF.”

This tight loop transforms the way designers iterate: it’s instant gratification and learning. You can try a bold new color scheme, a different layout, or an experimental interaction and know right away if it works. 

Anima’s Playground interface, with an AI chat panel on the left and a live preview on the right, encourages immediate iteration. You can have your design’s code and running app side by side, so any change (whether made by you or the AI assistant) updates the preview in real-time”.

This real-time aspect is like having an always-on usability test for your design. Instead of guessing how an animation will feel or how a dropdown will behave, you try it out instantly. Did that spacing tweak improve the look? Did the interactive menu work as expected? You’ll know right away. And because it’s so quick to test changes, you’re free to experiment more boldly. The Playground becomes your design sandbox – a place where trying out wild ideas or subtle refinements is fast, fun, and free from the fear of “breaking something” irreversibly.

An AI co-creator at your side

Perhaps the marquee feature of vibe coding is the AI assistant that’s ready to help build your vision. In Playground, this is like an on-demand co-designer/developer. You can type requests in plain language – anything from “Make the header stick to the top on scroll” to “Add a time and date picker component” – and watch the AI carry out your instructions in the code.​

Under the hood, the AI writes or modifies the code, but you don’t have to worry about the specifics. You’ll just see your app’s functionality or style change as requested. For example, say your Figma prototype had a nav menu that wasn’t interactive. In Playground, you could simply ask the AI, “Make the header menu items interactive,” and it will generate the necessary code to enable clicks, hovers, or navigation for those items​.

If you want a certain animation or transition, you can just describe it – “add a subtle fade-in animation for the modal” – and the AI agent will implement it. It’s coding by conversation. You don’t need to know if that involves CSS keyframes, React state changes, or JavaScript event handlers; Anima’s AI figures it out and updates your project accordingly, in seconds, right before your eyes​.

Crucially, you remain in control of the creative direction. The AI won’t do anything unless you ask, and you can always refine its output. It’s there to handle the heavy lifting (and the boring bits) of coding, so you can focus on the user experience and design intent. Think of it as a superpower: you bring the ideas, and the AI instantly brings them to life in code

This dynamic not only speeds up the design-to-development process, it also makes it more enjoyable – you’re essentially jamming with an AI that’s fluent in both design and code.

A safe space for experimentation

Working in the Playground feels liberating because it’s a safe space to try things out. Worried that a change might mess up your design? In Playground, you can always undo or roll back changes if you don’t like the result.

The platform keeps track of your iterations (thanks to the AI chat history and versioning), so it’s easy to revert to a previous state or tweak something and compare. This safety net gives you the confidence to push your creative boundaries. Go ahead and test a radical new layout or let the AI rearrange a component – if it doesn’t work out, you can undo with a click and no harm done​

Moreover, because the Playground is separate from your production codebase or your original Figma file, you can play without fear. It’s a true sandbox. You’re not going to accidentally break the team’s main project or overwrite someone’s code. This encourages collaboration too: a designer can use Playground to prototype an idea in code and share it for feedback, without the changes affecting any official project until everyone’s on board. It’s also worth noting that every experiment you run in Playground can be saved under your Anima account, so you won’t lose your work. You can have multiple Playground sessions for different ideas, all living in the cloud. This way, “what happens in the Playground stays in the Playground” until you decide to purposefully integrate it into a real project. It’s guilt-free experimentation – the best way to learn and discover new design possibilities.

Handoff and collaboration made easy

Anima’s Playground isn’t just a toy – it produces real, clean code that developers can work with. When you’ve got your design feeling just right in Playground, handing it off to developers (or continuing to build it out yourself) is straightforward. With one click you can export production-ready code or even push the entire project to GitHub for your dev team​

Anima uses high-quality frameworks and libraries (like ShadCN UI with Tailwind CSS) under the hood, so the code is organized and standard – no spaghetti code or crazy auto-generated stuff that would make a dev cringe​.

In fact, developers will appreciate that they’re getting a head start: the UI is already built out in code, letting them focus on hooking up backend logic or fine-tuning as needed. Collaboration is baked in. You can share a live preview link of your project with teammates or stakeholders, so they can interact with the prototype in a browser and give feedback. Developers can jump into the Playground themselves to inspect the code or adjust something minor on the spot. Since Playground runs in the cloud, a designer and developer could even sit together and literally see design changes and code updates happening live, in one environment – a much smoother workflow than tossing screenshots or PDFs back and forth. Developers benefit from vibe coding in Playground too. It’s a great way for engineers to rapidly prototype interfaces or explore design alternatives without starting a project from scratch. And because the AI assistant can handle routine UI coding tasks, developers can save time on boilerplate and focus on more complex coding challenges. Essentially, Playground can act as a front-end accelerator – producing pixel-perfect, responsive UI code at the press of a button​.

This means fewer misunderstandings in design handoff and faster iterations for the whole team. Designers and developers can finally collaborate on the same artifact: a living, breathing app that evolves from rough idea to polished product, all within Playground.

Try vibe-coding in Anima Playground

The best way to understand vibe coding is to experience it yourself. Anima’s Playground is free to start, and it’s built to make the design-to-code journey as smooth as possible for you and your team. Whether you’re a designer who’s curious about coding, or a developer looking to speed up your UI work, Playground offers a new creative workflow that blends the best of both worlds. It lets you go from a visual idea to a working concept in minutes, and to a polished product in hours​.

All with real-time feedback, AI help on tap, and no fear of messing up. Ready to give it a spin? We invite you to try vibe coding with Anima’s Playground and see how it can transform your design process. Load up a Figma design or start from a template, and let the Playground turn your ideas into reality. It’s coding, it’s designing, it’s the best of both – and it might just change the way you work. Jump in and start vibing!