Ask HN: Have you used v0, lovable or bolt for anything useful?

by roh26iton 1/22/2025, 3:30 PMwith 1 comments

I love playing around with these tools for quick prototyping and learning about some stuff, but don't see myself using these for serious apps. Any tips on what I could do?

by ashryanon 1/22/2025, 3:52 PM

My understanding is that these aren't really intended for much more beyond prototyping/MVP'ing.

I can't speak on the others, but I've used v0 a fair amount over the last year and have been happy with it as a prototyping tool. But the delta between the kind of UI it seems designed to generate and what, say, a designer working from user-centric first principles might come up with is huge.

I actually went through such an exercise where I prototyped something with v0 as part of an internal pitch. The prototype was super helpful in getting stakeholders engaged. Once I got a UX designer on board, they designed the concept from the ground up, and we tossed the v0 design and code completely.

This was the process working as intended. The prototype played an important role in getting something good shipped; it was not itself the end product.

At least today, I imagine v0 could be great for internal tools that would otherwise not get any UX love at all. But as far as shipping an app to external customers, I haven't been in a situation where I saw that as a viable path.