Apple SQUIRE: AI tool for UI prototyping revealed Apfelpatient

Apple researchers have unveiled SQUIRE – an experimental AI tool that allows developers to design user interfaces incrementally and in a controlled manner. The approach differs significantly from traditional AI coding tools.

AI-powered programming is booming – but anyone who has ever tried to design a user interface with an AI tool knows the problem: A prompt often changes more than intended, the result is difficult to predict, and the developer quickly loses control of the process. Apple researchers have now published a study that proposes a different approach – and supports it with a working prototype.

The study, titled "SQUIRE: Interactive UI Authoring via Slot QUEry Intermediate REpresentations," describes a visual tool that allows developers to build user interfaces step by step. Instead of an AI that generates a complete interface in response to a single prompt, SQUIRE relies on targeted, defined changes – and provides the developer with several alternatives to choose from at each step.

How SQUIRE works

The workflow begins with a description of the desired result and sample data. SQUIRE uses this to build a tree structure of UI components, in which individual areas are marked as placeholders. Developers can then populate these placeholders via a prompt – for example, with a button, an image gallery, or a navigation list.

For each placeholder, SQUIRE generates multiple suggestions that can be instantly displayed in a live preview. The crucial difference to conventional AI coding tools: changes only affect the selected area. The rest of the interface remains untouched. This avoids the typical cycle of prompt, unwanted change, and further prompt that leads to frustration with many AI tools.

Under the hood, SQUIRE uses its own intermediate representation called SquireIR, which models the user interface as a tree with named slots. Functional code in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is then generated from this representation. OpenAI's GPT-4o is used as the AI model.

Results of the user study

Apple tested SQUIRE with eleven front-end developers. The results of the study are promising: Participants not only used the tool as a code accelerator but also actively experimented with different design variations. The ability to try out changes in a targeted and risk-free way led developers to dare to make unconventional design decisions – knowing that every step could be easily undone.

Participants rated both the user-friendliness and the quality of the generated code and visual results as high. The predictability of the changes was particularly praised – an area where conventional AI coding tools often fall short.

What this means for Apple's Developer Strategy

SQUIRE is currently a research project and not publicly available. Nevertheless, the study offers insight into how Apple envisions the future of AI-powered software development. Instead of striving for maximum automation, Apple is pursuing an approach where AI acts as an assistant, leaving the developer in control.

This aligns with Apple's existing strategy for developer tools: Xcode was recently expanded to include support for coding models and agents, but remains a tool for technically proficient users. SQUIRE could be a building block for future Xcode features – or it could become a standalone prototyping tool within Apple's developer ecosystem. (Image: Shutterstock / LALAKA)