Stripe's internal AI prototyping tool, Protodash, has transformed the company's design process. The tool allows designers and product managers to turn Stripe's design system into clickable, production-quality prototypes in minutes. Protodash started as a bundle of Cursor rules, React components, and MCP integration, but evolved into a full web-based prototyping platform.
The biggest mindset shift for designers is not being afraid of the terminal anymore. With AI tools like Protodash, designers can now ask questions like "How does Git work?" and get answers without needing to know the commands. This has led to an equal number of product managers and designers using Protodash, making designer-PM relationships better.
Generic AI prototyping tools don't know a company's design system, resulting in "blurple slop." Protodash solves this problem by constructing dashboards from Stripe's building blocks reliably. The tool also lets teams explore real product ideas before writing production code, and push the edges of use cases in ways Figma never could.
Owen Williams, Stripe's design manager, built Protodash with a focus on being specific up front and avoiding sunk-cost fallacy when working with AI. He recommends clearing and starting again as soon as possible if an approach isn't working.
