Claude + DaisyUI Made Me a Monster

A great PM friend of mine asked me recently: Is it faster to mock up in Figma, or just let Claude Code spit out the UI for you?

Naturally, I tested it. I wrote up a description, tossed it to Claude, and boom—an interface appeared in seconds. And here’s the kicker: because I use DaisyUI, the output looked so clean it could have passed for a finished product.

Since I cannot use the real client UI, here's a quick Dashboard for TechCorp.

That’s when it hit me: I had accidentally created the world’s most dangerous prototype.

Because if you show a slick, polished-looking UI to an exec—one that has no backend, no logic, and no reality—they don’t see a wireframe. They see a deliverable. Cue the dreaded question:

“Excellent! So, that'll be in this release, right?”

No. No, it will not.

Enter The Wireframe Theme

DaisyUI is too awesome. I already had light and dark modes in my app, so I added one more: wireframe mode!

The same app in "wireframe" mode.

Flip the switch, and my shiny dashboard instantly transforms into a sketchy black-and-white prototype. Courier fonts. Hand-drawn borders. Graph paper backgrounds. Images replaced with [IMAGE] placeholders. Charts that look like they were drawn with a Sharpie by a sleep-deprived intern.

It screams “LOW FIDELITY” so loudly that no executive could possibly mistake it for something ready to ship.

Here's the amazing bit -- it's still the same app you just had! You can still use it!

!When you select this theme, your beautiful UI instantly, magically transforms into a wireframe. Problem solved.

The Results

In just a couple of minutes, I went from idea → AI-generated UI → live, clickable wireframe demo. I can hand it to stakeholders, let them click around, and not worry about anyone mistaking it for production software.

Yep. Wireframe theme.

Lesson Learned

If you’re prototyping with modern UI frameworks, beware: your designs might look too good. And too good is dangerous. Expectations get set. Deadlines get assumed. Suddenly your “quick sketch” has a Gantt chart attached to it.

Sometimes the smartest move isn’t to make things look better. It’s to make them look worse.

Would you like me to also draft a LinkedIn teaser post (with hashtags) to drive readers into this piece once you publish it?

Link to demo repo: https://github.com/inchoate/wireframe-demo