co-founder of Magic Patterns here, saw were were mentioned, figured I'd chime in:
We don't use Trigger for marketing at all and I actually never thought of it for that use case.
We're an AI design tool - prompt to create an interactive mockup - and we use Trigger to take screenshots of designs to provide a preview image. Taking a screenshot sounds easy, but it's not because Puppeteer constantly hits OOM errors. So you need a high-end machine, and so it can get expensive. We originally were using a homegrown solution, a microservice, but it would constantly crash (even though were paying $$$$$ for it).
Trigger spinning up jobs was perfect and we migrated in a day and now I never think about it.
As someone who currently "bricks" his phone and has gamified it a bit by sharing my stats with my brother-in-law who also does that, this is cool. I do think "not spending time on your phone" needs to be celebrated more.
P.S. "bricks" meaning a very strict screentime set up, only basically phone + text is available M-F
We always iterating and definitely need to improve! Anything you can point to explicitly that makes the canvas feel clunky/half finished? We're using a simple div under the hood!
To add some color: while we do generate code, we don't view ourselves as a code generator because our customers don't get value out of our tool from the raw code. They instead receive value from the interactive prototype, and for that reason it's lot of PMs, designers, founders using us versus developers.
oof! this is a bad bug that seemed to tick up overnight! Fixing this, thanks for flagging. If you create a support chat via "Get Support" or DM me happy to throw you some credits and regenerate it for you.
I mention this in another comment: v0 has been around as long as we have (October 2023), so it's very cool seeing how we have both iterated on the same problems, especially given Vercel is a $3B company and we are a team of two :-)
We have both evolved a lot and now have some major differences, given we focus on product teams more than developers:
- Magic Patterns has an infinite canvas
- Password protection on designs
- Feedback collection on prototypes
- Reusable components, so you can create a component library with us and then reference those components in your design
- We are only focused on frontend
A few customers actually use both us and v0! For example, they'll design in Magic Patterns and then copy paste the code into v0 to add a database.
I wouldn't be scared because in practice we don't see this! Instead we see 1. devs appreciating getting an interactive mockup and 2. the PM having a better sense of what it's like to build technically. (It's pretty cool seeing how AI tools like Magic Patterns help non-technical software professionals naturally learn more about web dev concepts because the best prompts reference code.)
At big companies, Magic Patterns designs are used created & used at the beginning of the product lifecycle for brainstorming and iteration. And there's still a human in the loop in the process: the PM prompting Magic Patterns. The value we create is not the actual raw code, and so we are not seeing teams telling their devs to simply "polish" it. The handoff still is very similar to most dev/design handoffs today, except it's a Magic Patterns design versus a Figma design.
In startup land, I think it's really important you love your customer. Because you cut through the noise by having your existing customers tell their friends about you. 30% of new users hear about us from their friends.
I'll also note: we launched for the first time in October 2023. At the time the space was not flooded. We first got 10 users who loved us — where I define "love" as using us weekly — and since then it's a game of continuous iteration!
On https://www.magicpatterns.com/ you should see an input box. Type anything you want, hit enter, and then you'll get hit with our regular login panel. But at the bottom, for today online, you'll see a "Coming from Hackernews, no login required" button.
> or even easier, the number of subscription months/years.
We do offer 20% off on annual plans! ;)
We're very proud to be largely self-serve and have pricing that is completely transparent right now. Of course, we're open to feedback on pricing, especially enterprise pricing, which is why I was intrigued by the other comment.
And I agree, I think most people forget that a push back on price is really a push back on value, and so the value needs to be there first.
I don't think generating images would be faster than generating code, plus you lose all the interactivity. Many designers tell us where they get the most value out of Magic Patterns is that the designs are interactive by default, unlike traditional vector-based design tools.
I'm with you that the first reaction is not "let's look at code output." In fact, for most of our users, they never look at the code. It's abstracted away from them and just an implementation detail to unlock interactivity.
> Maybe capping the size of a team on the "pro" plan would be an inbetween
That's interesting. We already have teams with 20+ folks on it today at very large companies, but haven't thought about that type of stuff too much - have been laser-focused on core product building. I think in the early days we spent a little too much time tweaking minor pricing plan details. You're right though we are now at a point where we are very likely leaving money on the table.
For example, "centralized billing" on our platform only exists because it was the result of a feature request from a larger customer.
> "The hard part of being an engineer is not writing JavaScript. It is building a solution that addresses the essential complexity of a problem without adding accidental complexity."
I have been oversimplifying it as "LLMs cannot read you mind."
What I'll add is we are seeing customers use Magic Patterns + other 'vibe coding' tools in conjunction. For example, they might use Magic Patterns for brainstorming and to think through the design, and then they'll copy the code from Magic Patterns into Replit to "make it real" and add a database or authentication.
We don't use Trigger for marketing at all and I actually never thought of it for that use case.
We're an AI design tool - prompt to create an interactive mockup - and we use Trigger to take screenshots of designs to provide a preview image. Taking a screenshot sounds easy, but it's not because Puppeteer constantly hits OOM errors. So you need a high-end machine, and so it can get expensive. We originally were using a homegrown solution, a microservice, but it would constantly crash (even though were paying $$$$$ for it).
Trigger spinning up jobs was perfect and we migrated in a day and now I never think about it.