shrey vijayvargiya

Posted on Aug 28

Anima vs Figma Make

#animaai #aiplayground #vibecoding #figmamake

In the evolving world of AI, design-to-code workflow tools have emerged as a powerful tool for designers and developers, also known as design developers.

For newcomers: Anima AI Playground is the AI code editor that can directly convert your figma frame/design into a real-world app without writing a single line of code or so-called writing the next generation programming language, i.e. English.

Anima AI Playground is an AI IDE, or an AI code editor that supports preview mode, publish mode and deployment on a custom domain, along with AI error handling, in-browser terminal/console.

In today’s story, we will start with a quick and easy getting started with Anima AI Playground, create a simple portfolio application and deploy it on the dummy link. Followed by feature-wise comparison and breakdowns, building a quick portfolio website using Anima AI Playground, comparing code repository, error handling, developer experience, with pricing in the end, to finally help you to decide the perfect tool for converting figma designs into a real-world application.

Getting Started with Anima AI Playground

Anima Playground provides detailed docs on using the tool, Anima Playground on getting started, creating an account, connecting the figma app, and importing designs

Quick explanation about AI Playground

AI chatbot supports Figma link, images, text and audio
Code preview and Code Editor to provide a prompt and let AI write code
Real-time preview of the code repository output
Version Control within the Playground
Push to Github feature
Live/Demo link for sharing
Team management and Access control
Project list to manage multiple projects

Let’s try both using a sample figma design. We will be using Anima Playground and Figma to make

Add the figma frame link on the Anima Playground
Provide a prompt for further customisation
Anima playground prefers React, Tailwind Vite as defaults

Dev Anima Playground screenshot

Let’s just quickly test the Playground with a real-world example. The image shown below is used to quickly create a developer portfolio.

The above image is the portfolio website, and we will quickly build it to test Anima Playground alongside Figma Make.

Once you are inside the Anima AI Playground, 3 ways you can instantly/quickly create your portfolio website

Add the figma frame link directly inside the AI chatbot (located in the bottom left-hand side)
Add a detailed prompt regarding the portfolio website
Provide the above image as the input to the AI chatbot

Once AI generate the code and previews the application, you can click the publish button to deploy the app on the testing link. Here is our portfolio website created using Anima

Feel free to further customise, add details and change styling to test the Anima Playground and play with the AI chatbot with some other dependencies, full-stack modules and animated components using plain English.

Anima AI Playground screenshot

Figma Make app screenshot

Screenshot showing Anima AI Playground and Figma Make building the same app on the very first prompt.

Feature Comparison

Below is a detailed comparison table in terms of feature breakdown b/w Anima Playground and Figma Make

* * *

Full-Stack Capability

Code output or AI code generation is an important factor measuring the quality, performance and technical debt.

Anima Playground supports multiple languages along with frameworks and dependencies for the user, which widens the team development scope and reduces the technical cost.

2 frameworks, Typescript and Javascript as programming languages, along with Tailwind or inline CSS styles for styling, are currently supported in Anima Playground, and no preferred or fundamental UI library is chosen by the AI Playground

Figma Make current version or probably the future version might not provide the support for multiple frameworks and languages, only React code, along with shadcn as the styling UI components library with Tailwind CSS is the fundamental and the only tech stack.

We have built a full-stack directory app using Anima Playground, depending on third-party modules for the following cases

Fuse.js for adding a demo/dummy search
Third-party API call for fetching data
Animations using framer-motion, CSS properties, GSAP or even styled components
Payments using Lemon Squeezy

Anima Playground provide support -

Add third-party modules like Fuse.js, Framer Motion, Firebase, Axios, Fs module and more
Integrate payments using Lemon Squeezy, Paypal, Stripe, and Polar
Add authentication via Supabase, Firebase, or Clerk
Manage environment variables and CRUD operations using natural language
Download the code repository to run locally for further customisation and full control

Anima Playground is specifically designed to create figma designs into full-stack applications, and hence adding other features like authentication, searching, and integrating APIs for payments are easy tasks handled with precision.

Error Handling

Error handling is critical because all we need are more Tokens with Proper Context or Prompts to let AI handle errors.

Error handling screenshot in Anima AI Playground

In the image shown above, one can see how Anima AI quickly debugs the error in the context and provides solutions accordingly.

Anima AI Playground handles errors thoroughly

Non-Contextual Error: AI agents debug and solve the error while content generation by running the app build
Contextual Error: AI LLM takes context and errors from the terminal and outputs them as the prompt to handle the targeted error

We can act more as an orchestrator, and Anima Playground is designed well to handle errors by providing contextual errors to the LLM for accurate problem-solving, enhancing the user experience.

Code Repository

Anima AI suits well for Entrepreneurs, Indie Hackers and mainly developers looking to explore full-stack capabilities, export clean code, and customise your workflow beyond a single framework.

Below are the code repository screenshots from Anima Playground and Figma Make

Code repository showing active file code in Anima AI Playground

Figma Make code repository showing active file code

Anima supports multiple frameworks and styling options, including:

Languages: TypeScript and JavaScript
Styling: Tailwind CSS or inline styles
Frameworks: Vite + React by default, with flexibility to switch

Versatility in code repository with flexibility makes Anima more suitable for teams with varied tech stacks, allowing developers to reduce tech debt and tailor output to existing infrastructure.

Developers care deeply about code structure. Anima provides a production-ready codebase with:

Clean file structure
package.json, config files
Framework-aligned best practices

Figma Make, by contrast, currently outputs raw code without a full repository structure, which may limit its use in team environments or larger projects.

Developer Experience & Flow

In side-by-side testing using the same Figma design, we observed:

Responsiveness: Anima supports desktop, tablet, and mobile previews out of the box. Figma Make defaults to desktop and requires manual resizing.
Component Handling: Figma Make rendered more visual details in the first output. Anima missed a few items (e.g., navbar, social links), but compensated with better backend structuring and editable code.
Image Support: Anima hosts images via its backend, making deployment easier. Figma Make typically sources images from services like Unsplash.
Development Flow: Anima AI Playground brings more control over deployment flow by providing 2 deployment alongside the custom domain support as well as full-control custom deployment by downloading the source code. Figma Make in general is the design oriented supports the Publish feature. One can quickly go from local development to live app in Anima AI Playground.

Team Management

Anima AI Playground is not just a code editor; it’s a full-fledged team and single developer project management tool. The Dev playground supports multiple project management tools, along with team-sharing features.

In the image shown below, the Anima Playground settings modal handles GitHub integrations, Team management, and features similar to those found in Google Docs and Notion.

Team management modal in Anima AI Playground

Alongside the team management, Anima AI have behind the curtains a dedicated team helping you to solve your problems and answer your questions. Do check out the Anima forum, a discussion platform to solve your doubts, https://forum.animaapp.com/

AI Context & Prompting

Anima offers a more robust AI prompt engine:

Context Window: Up to 128k tokens in paid plans
Modalities: Accepts Figma links, images, audio, and text
Error Handling: Detailed, token-aware responses with context sharing

Figma Make is simpler in this regard and doesn’t yet support rich error-handling or audio inputs.

Anima AI Pricing

Tabular pricing breakdown for AI playground

Refer to the Anima AI official pricing page for a detailed understanding - https://dev.animaapp.com/pricing

Figma Make is still in beta and offers basic functionality for free, but with limits around publishing, downloads, and project management.

For custom solutions with unlimited AI chat messages and a context window, use custom domains. Feel free to contact the Anima team.

Final Thoughts

Both Anima Playground and Figma Make represent exciting steps in the future of AI-assisted

That said, Figma Make’s tight integration into Figma and ease of use make it a solid choice for rapid prototyping, especially as it matures, but Anima AI Playground helps to quickly build real-world applications from figma design,s add advanced features like search, API integration and database, publish the app on a demo link to test the idea, and custom download.

Anima AI LLM have more of a full-stack developer capabilities with a detailed context window, error handling, debugging and full control over deployment and app management.

If you read till now, it’s a good time to quickly test and try Anima AI Playground.

That’s it for today, see you in the next one

Originally published on iHateReading