My zero-subscription design workflow — and an honest review of using Wender in a real indie context

I'm a solo indie developer building privacy-first software under Code and Sea. One of my core principles is owning my tools rather than renting them. So when I came across Wender while working through a Laracasts course, the pay-as-you-go model immediately caught my attention.

I've been using it to prototype layouts for my sites and it's genuinely accelerated how I visualise things. The quality of output for the token cost is solid, and the model fits my values perfectly, buy what you need, owe nothing when you step away.

I wrote up my full workflow (Wender → html.to.design → Figma) on the Logbook if anyone's curious: My Zero-Subscription Design Workflow

One honest note: I've hit some friction on the operational side, invoicing and support responsiveness, which I've also documented transparently in the post. Flagging it here not to pile on, but because I think it's useful feedback for the product to mature into a reliable tool for commercial indie shops.

Happy to answer any questions about the workflow itself.