Product
A structured planning environment for complex websites
Scaffolds holds one document per project. Pages, the blocks they are made of, the audiences those blocks serve, the journeys across them and the reasoning behind each decision are all the same record, revision checked on every write.
Architecture
The page tree is the backbone
Everything else hangs off the structure, so the structure is the thing you build first. Pages nest, and each top level page is its own tree rather than one sprawling diagram, which keeps a large site readable.
The canvas pans and zooms rather than scrolls, because a sitemap is a space to move around in and not a list to scroll through.
- Top level pages are separate trees, stacked with a rule between them
- Adding a page pans to it, so you never lose your place
- One document per project, so the whole architecture moves as one unit
Colour is audience intent. Grey stays for chrome such as headers and footers.
Wireframes
Layout and rationale stay together
A page is a stack of blocks, and a block is a stack of elements drawn as schematic line work. It is enough to agree structure and sequence without pretending to be a design.
Each block carries what it is for, the evidence behind it, anything still unresolved and the component it maps to in the build. That is the part most tools lose: six months later the wireframe survives and the argument does not.
- Purpose, evidence, open questions and red flags recorded on the block itself
- A component name, so planning and the build share a vocabulary
- Comments from reviewers, and pinned notes anywhere on the canvas
The page detail view. The block, its reasoning, its audiences and its comments in one place.
User journeys
An intent becomes a route through the architecture
A journey names the audience it serves, where people arrive from, what they are trying to achieve, the ordered steps through real pages, and where they leave to. Steps reference pages by identity, so renaming a page does not break the journey.
Because the steps are the actual pages, a journey is a path across the model rather than a flowchart drawn beside it.
- Entry, goal, ordered steps and exit, so the path is complete rather than suggestive
- Steps can leave the site, which is where most real journeys go
- Journeys and page detail share one chrome, so moving between them costs nothing
One of the four journeys in the scaffold for this site, from referral through to enquiry.
Collaboration
Stakeholders can take part without learning a design tool
The people whose approval a website needs are rarely the people who will open a design canvas. Reviewing has to cost them nothing.
Read without an account
Projects start private. Switch link sharing on and a client opens the URL and reads the whole project: no account, nothing to install. Editing is never granted by a link, only by invitation.
Comment and pin notes
Viewers can comment on a block and pin a note anywhere on the canvas. Feedback from the people who are not editing is the point, so it is deliberately open to them.
Roles that match reality
Owner, editor and viewer. An invitation is addressed to an email, so you can invite someone who has no account yet.
Version history
Every write is revision checked and recorded, so you can look back at what the project was and who changed it.
Review from a phone
The mobile view is a real projection of the same model, a hierarchy with focused detail views, not a shrunken canvas.
Concurrent editing that cannot clobber
Writes carry the revision they were based on. Two people working at once is safe because the document refuses a stale write rather than merging it badly.
AI
Your intelligence, our structured truth
There is no model inside Scaffolds. Connect the AI you already use and it reads the project where it lives; change to a different one next year and the project does not notice. What Scaffolds owns is the record of what was decided, which is the part that has to outlive whichever chat window it was decided in.
What makes it safe, either road
Stable identifiers
Every page, block, intent and journey carries its id in the file. That is what makes an import a merge rather than a replace: ids survive renames and moves.
Absent means unchanged
Only a literal (none) clears a field. A model that drops a line does not wipe what was there.
Deterministic parsing
No model is involved in reading the file back. The parser owns correctness, permanently.
Review before apply
The change list is shown first, with removals counted separately, and applying is one undo away.
A connection only reads
There is no method on the endpoint that writes. The most a connected AI can send back is a question or a proposal, and both wait for a person.
Why the file is still here
Your AI can now connect straight to a project and read it where it lives, which is the road most people take. The export did not become a legacy path when that landed; it became the one that works everywhere else.
A plain text file is readable by a person, diffable in Git, archivable, and accepted by every model without an integration. It is the format most likely to still work in ten years, it is how you leave with your work, and it is the answer for any organisation whose approved AI is not allowed to reach out to anything.
Both roads run through the same parser and the same review. Nothing was traded away to make the connected one convenient.
Scaffolds still sends nothing anywhere on your behalf. Your AI comes and reads, or you move the file.
Scope
One model, several lenses
Architecture, wireframes, journeys and the component inventory are views of the same document today. The model is designed to grow more of them, and this control keeps the difference explicit rather than blurring it.
Available today
Architecture
The page tree, nesting, and separate trees for each top level page. The backbone every other view refers to.
What it is
What teams use Scaffolds for
Scaffolds is website planning software that combines sitemaps, low fidelity wireframes, user journeys, component planning and the reasoning behind each decision in one structured model. Those are usually five tools; here they are five views of the same document.
Wireframing
Low fidelity wireframes built from blocks and schematic elements, so a page is a stack of sections you can argue about before anyone opens a design tool.
Sitemaps and information architecture
The page tree for a large site, nested, pannable, and stable under renaming and moving because pages carry identifiers rather than positions.
User journey mapping
An audience intent routed through real pages and out into external systems, with an entry, a goal, ordered steps and an exit.
Component planning
An inventory of what the site is built from, counted from the blocks themselves, marking what exists, what is new and what nobody has established yet.
Website specification
Purpose, evidence, open questions, red flags and decision status recorded against the block they belong to, then exported as one readable file for delivery.
AI assisted website planning
Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or your editor connected straight to the project, or the whole thing as Markdown for a provider that cannot connect. Every proposed change is listed before it applies.
Questions
The questions people ask before they know the name
Category questions, answered plainly, including the two comparisons that come up most.
Is Scaffolds wireframing software?
Yes. Scaffolds builds low fidelity website wireframes from structured blocks and schematic elements, a page at a time. What is different is that those wireframes are not standalone pictures: they sit in the same model as the sitemap, the user journeys, the component inventory and the reasoning behind each decision, so changing one is changing the plan rather than editing a drawing of it.
Is Scaffolds a sitemap tool?
Yes, though the sitemap is one view rather than the product. A sitemap tool records what pages exist. Scaffolds records why they exist, what each page is made of, who each section serves and what is still unresolved, all against the same page tree.
Does Scaffolds replace Figma?
No, and it is not trying to. Figma is where visual design happens. Scaffolds is used earlier, to agree structure, page composition, journeys and requirements before detailed design begins, and to keep the reasoning attached once it does. Teams generally use both, in that order.
Does Scaffolds replace Miro?
For website architecture, journeys and structured planning it usually can, because it is built around a website model rather than a general purpose canvas: pages, blocks and journeys are real objects with identifiers rather than boxes and arrows. For open ended workshops and anything that is not a website, a whiteboard is still the better tool.
Can I plan a large website without spreadsheets and slide decks?
That is the reason the product exists. A hundred page site planned across a spreadsheet of URLs, a deck of wireframes and a document of rationale has three sources of truth that disagree within a fortnight. Here they are one document, revision checked on every write.
Can I use AI to build a sitemap and wireframes?
Yes, with your own AI rather than one embedded here. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or your editor to a project and it reads the architecture, the rules and what has already been agreed where they live, then asks you about anything nobody has decided and leaves proposals for you to apply or refuse. If your provider cannot connect, the project exports as a Markdown file carrying its own editing rules and comes back the same way. Either road, every addition, edit, move and removal is listed before anything is written.
Can clients and stakeholders review without learning a design tool?
Yes. Turn on link viewing for a project and it becomes a link: anyone with it can read the scaffold in a browser, on a phone as well as a laptop, and leave comments or pinned notes without an account. Projects start private, editing always needs an invitation, and a link never grants it.
Follow the process, or go and look at one
How it works walks the sequence from intent through to handoff. The example project is a working scaffold you can open in a browser tab without an account. Or make your own: the free plan is one project with all of the above on it.