Static prototypes lie politely. They never load slowly, never show an empty state and never meet a 400-character customer name.

The first ten percent

For data-heavy products we build the riskiest ten percent in production code during week one. It’s rough, but it’s real — and it answers questions a mockup can’t.

What we keep

Not everything survives. But the data layer, the component boundaries and the performance budget usually do, which saves weeks later in the engagement.

When we don’t

For early concept work and flows with no real data yet, a quick design prototype is still the fastest way to learn.