SketchToWire — live sketch to wireframe

Turn rough iPad sketches into editable high-fidelity wireframes in real time

Problem

Designers sketch loosely on an iPad, then redraw everything from scratch in Figma to deliver. An HN user is explicitly hunting for a tool that turns rough sketches into higher-fidelity wireframes or illustrations in near real time; the closest option, Tldraw's Draw Fast experiment, closed in 2024. Demand exists, nobody is serving it.

Solution

An iPad or web canvas that recognizes hand-drawn strokes and simple component symbols and outputs editable vector wireframe layers in real time: rectangles snap into buttons or inputs, doodles become image placeholders, and results export to Figma / SVG. Keeps the hand-drawn feel but with clean structure.

Users

Product designers, indie developers, PMs who need fast prototypes, freelance design consultants

MVP

Stroke recognition into clean shapes and layout grid; UI component symbol snapping; vector export to SVG and a Figma plugin; toggle between cleaned and raw sketch; usable draft in under 30 seconds

Revenue

Free tier plus subscription for export and the Figma plugin; one-time iPad app purchase as a secondary option

Why now

Vision models now understand sketch structure well enough, and big players abandoned this niche; a solo front-end plus model calls can ship an MVP