From Figma to Functional: Building Interactive Product Walkthroughs for Vibe-Coded AI Apps

You’ve poured weeks into designing the perfect UI for your new AI app. The gradients are smooth, the typography is crisp, and every component is pixel-perfect in Figma. You link a few screens together using the prototype tool, send the link to a potential user or stakeholder, and wait for the "Wow!"

Instead, you get a "…So, it’s like a slideshow?"

That feeling is deflating, but it's incredibly common. The truth is, a standard Figma prototype is like a collection of beautiful photographs of a meal. It shows you what it looks like, but it can't convey the taste, the texture, or the aroma. For modern AI apps, which are all about dynamic responses and unique user flows, this gap is a dealbreaker. You’re not just showing a product; you’re trying to communicate a vibe—and a clickable PDF just won’t cut it.

This guide is the bridge across that gap. We'll show you how to move from a static Figma file to a truly functional, interactive product walkthrough using a no-code stack. You'll learn how to build a demo that doesn't just look real but feels real, giving users a genuine taste of your AI's magic before you ever write a line of production code.

Why Your Figma Prototype Feels Flat (And Why It Matters for AI Apps)

Figma is a phenomenal design tool, and its prototyping features are perfect for mapping out basic user flows. For many standard apps, linking screens together is enough to get the point across. But vibe-coded AI applications are a different breed.

Their value isn’t just in the layout; it's in the interaction.

• Dynamic Content: AI apps create content on the fly. A Figma prototype can only show pre-written, static text. It can't simulate the exciting moment an AI writer generates a fresh paragraph or an image generator produces a unique piece of art.
• Conditional Logic: The user's journey in an AI app is rarely linear. The app’s response depends entirely on the user's input. A user asking for "a happy dog" should get a different result than one asking for "a futuristic city." Figma prototypes struggle to represent this kind of "if-then" logic.
• The "Feel" of Interaction: So much of an AI app's appeal is the experience—the subtle loading animations while the AI "thinks," the way text streams onto the screen, the satisfying micro-interactions that make the product feel alive and responsive. These are the elements that create the "vibe," and they're nearly impossible to replicate by just clicking between static frames.

This is the ceiling most designers hit. They have advanced curiosities like, "How can I make my prototype react to user input?" or "What's the best tool to create high-fidelity interactions?" This is where we move beyond Figma.

The Modern No-Code Stack for Prototyping

To build a walkthrough that feels functional, we need to graduate from a single tool to a simple, powerful workflow. Think of it not as replacing Figma, but as adding a specialized "interaction layer" on top of your designs.

Our stack is simple: Figma for Design → Webflow for Interaction & Hosting.

• Figma: Remains your source of truth for all visual design, components, and styling.
• Webflow: This is where the magic happens. We'll import our static designs and use Webflow's powerful Interactions engine to add complex animations, create multi-step logic, and build a shareable, web-based walkthrough that feels like a real application.

This workflow lets you build something that feels like a finished product, allowing you to get incredibly accurate user feedback early on.

Part 1: Prepping Your Figma File for a Flawless Handoff

Before you can build, you must prepare. A messy Figma file will lead to a frustrating experience in Webflow. Taking 30 minutes to organize your design now will save you hours of headaches later.

Here’s your essential checklist:

1. Name Everything Logically: Don't leave layers named Frame 1028 or Group 54. Name them descriptively, like Submit Button, User Input Field, or AI Response Container. This makes finding and animating elements in Webflow infinitely easier.

2. Use Auto Layout: Structure your components and frames with Auto Layout wherever possible. This helps maintain spacing and alignment when you bring your designs into Webflow, which uses a similar box-model structure.

3. Flatten Judiciously: If you have complex illustrations or decorative elements with many layers that don't need to be animated individually, flatten them into a single object (e.g., export as an SVG or PNG). This simplifies your file and improves performance.

Watch Out! Don't flatten elements you intend to animate. If you want a button's icon and text to move independently, they must remain separate layers.

4. Export Assets Correctly: For any assets you need to export, like icons or images, use Figma's export settings to generate them at the correct size and format (SVGs are great for icons, WebP for images).

A clean, well-organized Figma file is the foundation for a great interactive walkthrough.

Part 2: Bringing Your Design to Life in Webflow

This is where we add the motion and logic. We’ll use a fictional AI app as our running example: "Write Away," a tool that helps overcome writer's block by generating creative opening sentences. Our goal is to prototype the core interaction: a user types in a topic, clicks "Generate," and the AI provides a suggestion.

Step 1: Import Your Design

There are a few ways to get your designs from Figma into Webflow, but a common method is to use a Figma-to-Webflow plugin. This will convert your Figma styles and layouts into Webflow classes and divs, giving you a massive head start.

Step 2: Build with Interactions

Webflow Interactions is a visual tool for creating powerful, timeline-based animations. You can trigger animations based on clicks, hovers, page loads, or scrolling.

For our "Write Away" app, we'd select our "Generate" button and create a new "Mouse Click (Tap)" trigger. This opens up the animation timeline. Now, we can define what happens when the button is clicked:

• The "Generate" button fades out.
• A "Loading Spinner" element fades in and starts spinning.
• The "AI Response Container," which is initially hidden, fades in after a short delay.

Just by sequencing these simple events—fade, spin, appear—we’ve already created an experience that feels far more dynamic and responsive than a simple Figma click-through.

Mastery: Faking the "AI Vibe" with No Code

Here's the million-dollar question: "How do I build a prototype that can handle user input or variables without a real database or AI model?"

The secret is to simulate the dynamism. You don't need a true AI; you just need to create the illusion of one. Webflow is perfect for this.

Let's imagine the user input for "Write Away" is a simple text field. We can't actually process that text, but we can make it feel like we are. Instead of one "AI Response Container," we can create three different ones, each with a unique pre-written sentence.

• Response-Container-1: "The old bookstore smelled of leather and forgotten memories…"
• Response-Container-2: "Captain Eva adjusted her helmet, the red dust of Mars swirling at her feet…"
• Response-Container-3: "It wasn't the money he missed, but the silence it afforded…"

In our Webflow Interaction, instead of just showing one container, we can build a slightly more complex animation that hides all three by default and then randomly reveals one of them. While not truly intelligent, this simple trick makes the prototype feel less predictable and more dynamic on each click. It mimics the variability of a real AI, effectively conveying its core value proposition.

This is how you prototype the vibe. You're demonstrating the experience of the AI's response, which is what really matters for user testing and stakeholder buy-in at this early stage.

Share, Test, and Gather Feedback

Once your walkthrough is built in Webflow, you have a live, shareable URL. You can send this to anyone, and they can interact with it in their browser—no software, no plugins.

To take it a step further, you can embed a simple feedback form from a tool like Tally.so directly onto the page or link to it. Ask targeted questions like:

• "On a scale of 1-5, how satisfying was the 'generate' interaction?"
• "What did you expect to happen after you clicked the button?"
• "Did the experience feel fast and responsive?"

This gives you concrete, actionable feedback on the feel of your product, something a static prototype could never provide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the real difference between a Figma prototype and an interactive walkthrough?

Think of it as fidelity. A Figma prototype is great for mapping out the user flow and screen architecture (low-to-mid fidelity). An interactive walkthrough built in Webflow focuses on the micro-interactions, animations, and dynamic feel of the app (high fidelity). It’s the closest you can get to the final product without code.

Do I need to know how to code to use Webflow?

No! Webflow is a visual development platform. While knowing HTML/CSS concepts helps, its interface allows you to build complex layouts and interactions without writing code. Their educational resources, like Webflow University, are also best-in-class.

Why can't I just use Figma's interactive components or variables for this?

Figma's recent additions are powerful but still operate within a closed design environment. They are fantastic for creating reusable, interactive design system components (like a dropdown menu). However, they can't easily replicate the complex, timeline-based animations, page-wide triggers, and hosting capabilities that a dedicated tool like Webflow offers. They're solving different problems.

How long does this process usually take?

Once you're comfortable with the workflow, you can turn a well-prepped Figma design into a polished interactive walkthrough in just a few hours, not days or weeks. The investment in learning the tools pays off quickly in the quality of feedback you receive.

Beyond the Static Screen

To truly sell the vision of an innovative, vibe-coded AI product, your demo needs to do more than just show screens—it needs to convey a feeling. By adopting a simple no-code stack, you can create high-fidelity walkthroughs that bring your vision to life, spark excitement, and gather the feedback you need to build something truly remarkable.

This is just the beginning of what's possible with AI-assisted development. To see what’s possible, explore the full repository of projects where developers and enthusiasts can discover, remix, and draw inspiration from various projects built using vibe coding techniques.