Open Design
🎨 Local-first, open-source alternative to Anthropic's Claude Design. ⚡ 19 Skills · ✨ 71 brand-grade Design Systems 🖼 Generate web · desktop · mobile prototypes · slides · images · videos · HyperFrames 📦 Sandboxed preview · HTML/PDF/PPTX/MP4 export 🤖 Runs on Claude Code / Codex / Cursor / Gemini / Op
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What is Open Design?
Open Design is the official open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Design. It transforms your existing coding agent—such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, or Qwen—into a design engine driven by 132 composable file-based skills and 150 portable DESIGN.md design systems. The tool runs locally on your machine, generating decks, landing pages, dashboards, and complete brand systems that you own and control.
Key features include 132 shippable SKILL.md bundles that drop into a folder and appear after restarting the daemon, 150 portable DESIGN.md systems from brands like Linear, Vercel, Stripe, Apple, Cursor, and Figma, and 17 first-party BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) agent adapters. The workflow follows four iterative stages: Detect (scans for agents and loads skills/systems), Discover (question form for surface, audience, tone, scale, brand context), Direct (pick from 5 deterministic visual directions with OKLch palette and font stack), and Deliver (agent writes to disk, preview in sandboxed iframe, export HTML/PDF/PPTX/ZIP/Markdown).
Open Design is designed for developers, design engineers, creative directors, and teams who want professional design capabilities in their developer-controlled AI workflows. It appeals to users who prefer open-source software, local-first processing, and ownership of their data and artifacts. The tool is ideal for product launches, pitch decks, editorial papers, marketing assets, and any project requiring intentional, expressive interfaces.
The platform emphasizes openness, modularity, and user ownership. All code is Apache-2.0 licensed, available at github.com/nexu-io/open-design. Users can fork the repo, edit skills, add custom DESIGN.md systems, and self-host the daemon anywhere Node 24 runs. The desktop app (Electron for macOS/Windows/Linux), local HTTP daemon (od CLI), and skills + systems Markdown bundles are all open source and local-first.
Open Design pricing
Pricing model: Freemium
Open Design is completely free and released under Apache-2.0 license with no subscription. There is no Open Design subscription cost. Users pay only the API costs of their chosen model provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, xAI, Moonshot, DeepSeek, Groq, OpenRouter, or self-hosted vLLM), billed directly to their account. BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) keeps credentials and spending on the user's side. Users can self-host, fork the repo, and run the daemon on their own machines at no additional cost.
Open Design pros
- Open-source under Apache-2.0 license with no subscription cost
- Local-first design keeps data and artifacts on your machine
- 132 composable file-based SKILL.md bundles ready to use
- 150 portable DESIGN.md systems from top brands like Linear, Vercel, Stripe, Apple
- 17 BYOK agent adapters including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, OpenCode, Qwen, DeepSeek, Grok, Hermes, Kimi, Devin, OpenCode, Pi, Mistral Vibe, Kiro, Kilo, Qoder
- Agent-agnostic skills and systems—switch agents with config change not redesign
- Full ownership of generated artifacts as files in your project directory
- Self-hostable anywhere Node 24 runs, deployable to Vercel/Cloudflare/Netlify
- Sandboxed iframe preview with streaming todos and real-cwd filesystem
- Export to multiple formats: HTML, PDF, PPTX, ZIP, Markdown
- 5-dim self-critique gates ensuring philosophy, hierarchy, execution, specificity, restraint
- OKLch color palette with professional font stack and layout posture cues
- Magazine-style web PPT skill (guizang-ppt) for product launches and pitch decks
- Multilingual support including EN, zh-CN, ja in editorial paper systems
- Active community with Discord, GitHub Issues, RFCs, and roadmap conversations
- Three runnable surfaces: desktop app, daemon CLI, and skills + systems bundles
Open Design cons
- Requires installing CLI or desktop app—no hosted sandbox available yet
- You pay API costs separately for whichever model provider you choose
- Minimum setup requires local daemon plus a coding agent on $PATH
- Node 24 required to run the daemon
- No built-in server—daemon talks directly to your provider
- Smaller community compared to proprietary alternatives (6 contributors, 23 cities)
- 132 skills are ongoing experiments with 5 currently in prototype phase
- Steep learning curve for users unfamiliar with CLI and agent workflows
Frequently asked questions about Open Design
What is Open Design?
Open Design is the official open-source AI design workspace from the nexu-io/open-design project. It turns a local coding agent—Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, or Qwen—into a design engine driven by composable skills and portable DESIGN.md systems.
Is Open Design official?
Yes. The canonical project lives at open-design.ai and the source is on GitHub at github.com/nexu-io/open-design. Open Design, OpenDesign, open-design, and Open Design AI all refer to this same project.
How is Open Design different from Claude Design?
Claude Design is a hosted product tied to a single vendor. Open Design is local-first, open source under Apache-2.0, and BYOK: you bring your own agent, credentials, and DESIGN.md system.
Does Open Design run locally?
Yes. The desktop app, daemon, and skill runtime run on your machine. Generated artifacts land in your project directory instead of being forced through a vendor cloud.
Which coding agents does Open Design support?
Open Design ships 17 first-party BYOK adapters out of the box: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, Grok, Hermes, Kimi, Devin for Terminal, OpenCode, Qwen, DeepSeek, Pi, Mistral Vibe, Kiro, Kilo, and Qoder. Any adapter that speaks the same skill protocol works—switching agents is a config change, not a redesign.
Can I self-host or fork it?
Yes. The code is Apache-2.0. You can fork the repo, edit skills, add your own DESIGN.md systems, or run the daemon on your own machines.
Is my data sent to Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google?
Only your prompt and skill context goes to whichever provider you bring keys for (BYOK). Open Design has no server of its own—the daemon talks to your provider directly. Generated artifacts land as files in your project directory, not in any vendor cloud.
How much does Open Design cost?
The product is free and Apache-2.0—there is no Open Design subscription. You pay the API costs of whichever provider you use (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, xAI, Moonshot, etc.), billed directly to your account. BYOK keeps both the credentials and the spend on your side of the line.
Can I switch agents without redoing my work?
Yes. Skills and DESIGN.md systems are agent-agnostic—the same SKILL.md file renders against Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Grok, Hermes, Qwen, or any other supported adapter. Switching agents is a config change in the daemon, not a redesign.
What's on the Open Design roadmap?
The live roadmap is at docs/roadmap.md in the GitHub repo, and weekly release notes ship through GitHub Releases. Major themes for the next quarter: more agent adapters, richer template families (3D, video, audio), and an optional shared-daemon mode for design teams.