Wireframes were a compromise. A way to say "I have an idea" without committing to a position. They communicated structure without soul — and then we'd hand them off and wait for someone else to make them real.
The problem was always the fidelity gap. You'd design a careful low-fidelity flow, everyone would nod along in the meeting, and then six weeks later the thing that shipped looked nothing like what anyone had agreed to. The wireframe was never the design — it was just the skeleton of an argument.
Prototyping tools have collapsed that gap. Now you can think in interactions, feel the timing of a micro-animation, notice that a tap target is slightly too small — all before a single line of production code is written. The artefact becomes the conversation. This isn't just faster. It's fundamentally more honest.
The best part: you find out you're wrong much earlier. A prototype that fails in front of a user in week one saves you from a product that fails in front of thousands in week twelve. The wireframe couldn't do that. The prototype can.
