The truth is, I’m a bit of a cheapskate. Not surprisingly, one of my last projects at my previous company, focused on cost reduction, engaged me so much.
Whether we’re in an AI hype or non-hype period (the market still doesn’t seem quite decided), a large portion of developers are firmly on board with Claude Code, Anthropic, and the whole gang, despite the high subscription costs. I’m tempted to try the tool and its ecosystem, but the pricing, especially here in Brazil, is quite prohibitive, at least in my view.
A person who wants to experiment and build products doesn’t live by code alone. Figma has also created its own dependencies for web development. And, sadly, it offers development, AI, and MCP features at anything but modest prices. In this scenario, I set out in search of free and open-source solutions and found a few that are at least usable and can help speed up the design + code creation process.
For the past few months, I’ve been exploring tools such as Google Antigravity and OpenCode to develop a few projects. Both are free and offer a certain quota of model usage at no cost, including some Claude models in Antigravity. Additionally, using an OpenRouter key is an alternative in both tools if the quota for the native models runs out.
As an alternative to Figma, I found Penpot, a fairly similar tool that works with agents via MCP. Through this connection, it’s possible to have a two-way workflow for creating interfaces. You can use a prompt to ask it to create whatever wireframe you want (as shown in the video below), or ask the agent to code the interface currently displayed on the screen.
In short, you can build a practical, capable setup without spending a fortune on subscriptions. By combining free alternatives for coding and models with an open-source design tool integrated via MCP, I gain speed and freedom to prototype and implement almost any interface.
Originally posted in Portuguese at my LinkedIn.
🤖 Assisted by AI to translate and create the cover
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