A text format for UI wireframes
comparing token costs across 4 format
Details
- External ID
- 46895733
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- A text format for UI wireframes
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Feb. 5, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 5
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.10512129380053908
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
I've been exploring how to describe UI layouts to LLMs efficiently.The problem: When you ask an AI to generate or modify UI, how do you describe the current state? - Natural language ("header on top, form below") is ambiguous - ASCII art breaks when edited (alignment issues) - HTML is precise but verboseI ran some measurements. For a simple login form: - Natural language: 102 tokens - ASCII art: 84 tokens - HTML: 330 tokensI experimented with a grid-based text format using Excel-like cell references: grid: 4x3 A1..D1: { type: txt, value: "Login" } A2..D2: { type: input, label: "Email" } D3: { type: btn, value: "Submit" } This came out to 120 tokens – less than HTML, more precise than natural language.Built a CLI to render it to SVG/PNG: npx ktr input.kui -o output.pngCurious what approaches others have tried for this problem. Is there something I'm missing that already solves this well?Code: https://github.com/enlinks-llc/katsuragi
Enrichment
- Theme
- typography and unicode text tools
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- AI feature
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- text format for ui wireframes with token cost comparison
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes Designing a compact text-based DSL or layout schema for wireframes and benchmarking token usage across LLMs can easily be built with an AI coding assistant.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 39 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #40 of 40 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 73 days after the earliest competitor.
- ISON · hn · 2025-12-26 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Blockframe · ph · 2026-09-21 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- OpenUI · hn · 2026-03-11 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- Justif · hn · 2026-07-17 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- Unicode cursive font generator that checks cross-platform compatibility · hn · 2026-01-01 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- TokenLens · ph · 2026-09-15 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- WireMD · hn · 2025-11-24 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- `tc` like `wc` but for LLM tokens · hn · 2026-01-12 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.36
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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