To: Local-first architecture is the key moat against Notion and Figma
Meng To · My AI Design Workflow That Doesn't Ship Slop · May 6, 2026 · at 17:10
Designer Meng To discusses his product strategy and why he builds applications locally rather than relying on cloud-hosted SaaS tools.
0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“First of all, for me, when I make apps, I look at what is the mode? What is something that I can do with my app that Notion cannot do or Figma cannot do? For me, that mode right now is the fact that everything is local.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Meng To
To: Traditional UI templates are incompatible with AI coding agents
“You can go to any of the templates that you find on VZero, Lovable you know, all of these other place Framer, Figma community for people who are more familiar with designs, and the problem with those is that they are highly close behind the techniques and the …”
To: AI builders must rapidly adopt new models to maintain moats
“As someone who works in AI, your mode is basically, you have to be new, you know, you have, like, I don't, I'm sure anyone can relate, But you always, when there's a new model that comes, you have to talk about it. Otherwise you're kind of losing a lot of that…”
To: Products built purely with AI will show visible defects
“They want real people, they want real craftsmanship behind all of these pixels at some point, because, you know, the cracks are going to show if you only use AI. The, you know, the whole way.”
To: Derivative product design slashes perceived value by up to 100x
“Niche is the key word here because you cannot compete anymore with people who are generalized. It's too difficult. Nowadays we want authenticity, we want niche, we want taste, and if something looks like another thing, it kind of reduced the value by, like, al…”
Meng To: v0 and Lovable defaults make AI apps look identical
“And funny that you mentioned Schatzian because it's one of the most common templates that you're going to be looking at most of the time when you're going to problem with vZero. It's very much embedded into the platform and in lovable, you're going to see some…”