How Mobbin shipped two internal tools in three months with the tldraw SDK
Faced with slow, rigid software, Mobbin used tldraw to build custom tools—faster than off-the-shelf solutions.
Challenge
Mobbin helps designers and product teams streamline research and find inspiration for their work by providing a comprehensive library of UI and UX designs from real-world digital products.
Behind the scenes, teams at Mobbin relied on a traditional content management system (CMS) to power the product’s content curation and machine learning workflows. However, as Mobbin grew more complex and more unique in its content structure, their CMS couldn’t keep up.
After spending months hunting for an alternative solution that could fit their requirements, the Mobbin team found a perfect fit in tldraw’s infinite canvas SDK—a fast, flexible, and developer-friendly foundation to build to specification.
Solution
tldraw’s existing React-based canvas and features—like zooming, panning, and selection—helped the team move quickly. From there, the SDK’s APIs made it easy to define custom shapes and logic specific to their workflows.
Because tldraw is so powerful, we can update the logic to fit our needs exactly.
— Jian Jie Liau, CTO and Co-Founder of Mobbin
With only three engineers, the company built and shipped two fully functional internal tools in less than three months, both powered by the tldraw SDK. The first is used by their machine learning team to annotate UI elements, benchmark models, and work more efficiently with training data. The second helps the content team manage thousands of design references—making it easier to tag, organize, and curate everything that goes into the Mobbin library.
If we had tried to build our own tool from scratch, we couldn’t have done it any faster—or made the process any smoother.
— Jian Jie Liau
Results
The content you see on Mobbin today is curated using a custom canvas tool built on tldraw. With their bespoke solution, Mobbin’s Content Team ensures that every design showcased is relevant and high-quality.
We chose tldraw because we can really see ourselves continuing to build in the long term with it. It’s very extensible.
— Jian Jie Liau
Today, the content on Mobbin is curated using their custom canvas tool. The content team reviews and manages every design, ensuring users are presented with pertinent, high-quality content each time they log on.
We chose tldraw because we can really see ourselves continuing to build in the long term with it. It’s very extensible.
— Jian Jie Liau
Mobbin didn’t need a large team or a massive engineering effort to build high-impact internal tools. With tldraw’s SDK as a foundation, they created solutions tailored to how their teams work best.
To learn more about building with tldraw, get started today with the tldraw SDK. Their development process is accelerating, too. There’s no need to wait for feature requests—the team builds exactly what they need, when they need it, while still benefiting each month from the performance improvements, fixes, and features coming downstream from the tldraw SDK.
Want to learn more about building with tldraw? Get started today with the tldraw SDK.