Building software has never been easier. Building the right software has never been harder.
Today, we shipped two things to help close that gap:
- Prototyping with Balsamiq AI: Generate interactive prototypes from your wireframes in Balsamiq.
- Balsamiq MCP server: Connect Balsamiq Cloud to Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools to code, review, and analyze.
We're now the only tool that takes you from low-fidelity, think-first wireframes to interactive prototypes with the click of a button.
The backstory
For years, customers have been asking us some version of: can I go just a bit further?
Not linking screens together (you could already do that). More like making it feel real. While you could show wireframes to anyone, some stakeholders really did need to come into later conversations, and customers didn't want to leave Balsamiq.
We'd always said no. We'd watched other design tools chase fidelity, get bloated, and lose the plot. The conversation goes from "is this the right thing to build?" to "can we make the button rounder?" and suddenly nobody's talking about the user anymore.
This problem has gotten about a million times worse with vibe coding and everyone shipping PRs that no one has time to review.
But the asks never stopped, and AI changed what was possible.
So we started asking ourselves: what would prototyping look like if it came from us? If it started with wireframes, respected good UX, and didn't throw product thinking out the window?
We spent the last few months on it. We built a new backend infrastructure, made all the necessary UI changes, and interviewed dozens of customers.
Our dev teams blew our minds when we finally got to use it.
Create, iterate, and share prototypes
Starting today, you can use Balsamiq AI to generate clickable, shareable, real-looking prototypes right from your wireframes:
- Create your wireframes, on your own or with Balsamiq AI.
- Select them all.
- Click “Generate prototype.”
- Balsamiq AI turns it into an interactive prototype, right on your board.
I recommend generating prototypes once you have a full user flow, like this:
That prototype is interactive and shareable, and you can regenerate it after you edit your wireframe.
The Balsamiq MCP server
We also shipped the Balsamiq MCP server. MCP is an open standard that lets AI tools talk to external services.
In practice: Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools following the protocol can now read your Balsamiq wireframes directly.
Once connected, paste a board URL into your AI tool and ask it to generate user stories, spot missing states, write a QA plan, check designs against a PRD, or build working code from your wireframe. Your wireframe becomes the prompt:
It’s much, much more accurate to your intent and requirements than just prompting with words. And setup takes about 60 seconds:
Where is this all going?
The low-fidelity, fast wireframing tool you know and love isn't going anywhere. Prototyping is there when you want it, invisible when you don't. And by now, we've made most of the big visual changes needed to make space for these features.
So it’s a new chapter of Balsamiq. We're proud of it, and have so much more to build for you.
There are dozens of ideas we have for prototyping in Balsamiq (design review agents, more integrations, different export options, to name a few). And we have plans to improve the MCP server too, like getting it listed on the official marketplaces and letting it interact with your wireframes right on your board.
I’m sure after playing with both, you’ll have feedback and ideas too.
So please pull up a chair, turn on that background music, and try prototyping today.
