---
type: entity
subtype: tool
title: "Builder.io"
description: "Figma-to-code product Cole cites as the canonical case where training a custom model beat general GPT, then used GPT to refine the generated code."
resource: "https://www.builder.io"
tags: [no-code, app-builder]
videos: [the-only-ai-developer-roadmap-you-need-in-2024]
created: 2026-07-21
updated: 2026-07-21
---

# Builder.io

Builder.io is a design-to-code product: "a really awesome tool called builder. basically you give figma website designs and it turns it into code for you" ([0:05:44](../../sources/the-only-ai-developer-roadmap-you-need-in-2024.md)). You hand it a Figma file and it emits front-end components, closing the handoff gap between a designer's artboard and a working codebase.

In Cole's AI developer roadmap it plays a specific argumentative role. Step four of that roadmap marks deep learning, machine learning, and NLP as **optional**, on the grounds that general models like GPT and Claude are strong enough for nearly every use case, so most builders should never train anything. Builder.io is the exception that proves the rule: converting a pixel-accurate design into clean, framework-idiomatic code is narrow and structured enough that a general model underperformed, and a purpose-trained model won. It is the concrete answer Cole gives to "when is a custom model actually worth it," and the shape of that answer is instructive: not "when the task is hard" but "when the task is narrow, repetitive, and has a very specific output format."

The second half of the example is the part people skip. Even with a custom model doing the conversion, a general model is still used afterward to refine and clean up the generated code. That is a small, portable pattern for [multi-model](../../concepts/multi-model-agent.md) systems: a specialized model for the narrow transformation, a general model for the judgment and polish on either side of it. The lesson generalizes past Figma-to-code and back into ordinary [model selection](../../concepts/model-selection.md) - reach for [fine-tuning](../../concepts/fine-tuning.md) only after prompting a stronger general model has demonstrably failed on your specific task, and expect the fine-tune to be one stage in a pipeline rather than the whole system.

## Realizes

- [Fine-Tuning](../../concepts/fine-tuning.md) - Adapting a base model to a task or domain via additional training, weighed against just prompting a stronger general model; Builder.io is Cole's example of when that trade genuinely pays.
- [Multi-Model Agents](../../concepts/multi-model-agent.md) - Combining several models so each does what it is best at: the custom model converts, a general model refines.
- [AI Coding Assistant](../../concepts/ai-coding-assistant.md) - A tool that generates code and offloads low-leverage software work, here from a design file rather than a prompt.

## Contrasts with

- [Lovable](./lovable.md) - Builds front ends from natural-language prompts rather than from an existing design file.
- [bolt.new](./bolt-new.md) - Generates whole full-stack applications from a prompt, with no design artifact as the input.
- [v0](./v0.md) - Prompt-to-component generation, the other end of the same design-to-code problem.

## Works with

- [GPT-4o](./gpt-4o.md) - The general-purpose model that stands in for "just use GPT," used to refine what the custom model produces.
- [React](./react.md) - The component framework the generated front-end code targets.

## Related

- [Model Selection](../../concepts/model-selection.md) - Choosing the right model per task by trading off quality, speed, and cost.
- [Prompt Engineering](../../concepts/prompt-engineering.md) - The cheaper lever to exhaust before training anything custom.
- [Learn by Building](../../concepts/learn-by-building.md) - The roadmap's overall posture: move fast through fundamentals, spend your time shipping.
- [Generative UI](../../concepts/generative-ui.md) - Interfaces produced or driven by a model rather than hand-authored.

## Sources

- [The ONLY AI Developer Roadmap You Need in 2024](../../sources/the-only-ai-developer-roadmap-you-need-in-2024.md) - "[0:05:44] a really awesome tool called builder. basically you give figma website designs and it turns it into code for you"
