Design or redesign frontend UI and marketing graphics on the Superdesign infinite canvas — the Superdesign skill, packaged as a DeepSeek Harness bundle.
Superdesign: the design skill for Claude Code, Cursor and any coding agent
Stop shipping AI-slop UI. Coding agents write great code and mediocre interfaces: generic layouts, default shadcn everything, no taste. Superdesign is the skill that gives your agent design judgment, so the UI it ships actually looks considered.
Install it once and your agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and 70+ others) can find real design direction, set up a design system, and generate + iterate high-quality UI drafts on an infinite canvas, all without leaving your terminal.
Superdesign is an AI product design agent. It gives coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and 70+ others) real design judgment, so the UI they ship looks considered instead of generic.
What it does — finds design direction, sets up a design system from your codebase, and generates + iterates high-quality UI drafts on an infinite canvas, all from your terminal.
Who it's for — developers, indie hackers, and product/UI designers who want to go from idea to shippable UI fast without leaving their coding agent.
How it's different — style-preset skills just swap in a theme or a component library. Superdesign designs into your existing design system: it reads your code for context, gathers real style references, and produces branchable drafts you refine.
Cross-session continuity — after the first real-codebase design, the skill remembers the project, draft, extracted components, and budgeted source-context bundle so later unchanged iterations resume without repeating codebase discovery.
Two ways in — this skill from any coding agent, or the web app at superdesign.dev.
Not the legacy IDE extension. The archived open-source superdesigndev/superdesign VS Code extension is an older, separate project. This skill and are the current, maintained product.
The skill is then invoked as /superdesign:superdesign. (Do not also run npx skills add in Claude Code — that installs a second, unnamespaced copy of the same skill.)
Use design agent to generate high quality design drafts:
Create project (optionally seed a baseline draft from an HTML template via --template)
Create design draft
Iterate design draft (replace / branch)
Plan flow pages → execute flow pages
Fetch specific design draft
Overall SOP for designing features on top of existing app:
Investigate existing UI, workflow
Setup design system file if not exist yet
Requirements gathering: ask the user using the session's available user-input mechanism; if none is available, ask in chat (optionally use Inspiration tools when needed)
Ask user whether ready to design in superdesign OR implement UI directly
If yes to superdesign
5.1 Create/update a pixel perfect html replica of current UI of page that we will design on top of in .superdesign/replica_html_template/.html (html should only contain & reflect how UI look now, the actual design should be handled by superdesign agent)
5.2 Create project with this replica html + design system guide
5.3 Start desigining by iterating & branching design draft based on designDraft ID returned from project
Always-on rules
Design system should live at: .superdesign/design-system.md
If .superdesign/design-system.md is missing, run Design System Setup first.
Ask high-signal questions about constraints, taste, and tradeoffs using the session's available user-input mechanism; if none is available, ask in chat.
Read each command's default output directly — it is agent-optimized (compact TOON plus help[] next-step hints). Add --json only when you genuinely need the full machine-readable payload, and --full only to expand truncated fields.
replica_html_template rules (Canvas only)
The purpose of replica html template is creating a lightweight version of existing UI so design agent can iterate on top of it (Since superdesign doesn't have access to your codebase directly, this is important context)
Overall process for designing features on top of existing app:
Identify & understand existing UI of page related
Create/update a pixel perfect replica html in .superdesign/replica_html_template/.html (Only replicate how UI look now, do NOT design)
If design task is redesign profile page, then replicate current profile page UI pixel perfectly
If design task is add new button to side panel, identify which page side panel is using, then replicate that page UI pixel perfectly
replica_html_template = BEFORE state (what exists now). It provides context for Superdesign agent.
Actual design will be done via superdesign agent, by passing the prompt
The replica_html_template must contain ONLY UI that currently exists in the codebase.
DO NOT design or improve anything in the replica_html_template
DO NOT add placeholder sections like ``
DO create pixel-perfect replica of current UI state
Save to: .superdesign/replica_html_template/.html
Naming & Reuse
Naming convention
Name replica_html_template for reusability: Use the page route (e.g., home.html, settings-profile.html, dashboard.html)
This makes it easy to identify if a page_template already exists.
Before creating a replica_html_template:
Check if .superdesign/replica_html_template/ already contains a matching file
If exists: reuse it or update to reflect the latest existing UI
If not exists: create the neww file
Example: Adding a "Book Demo" section to home page
BAD approach:
Book a Demo
Schedule
GOOD approach:
Then in the iterate command:
1/ create project passing this replica html
2/ create design draft based on design draft id
1) Design System Setup
Step 0 — Ask user (one question)
"Do you want to create a new design system or extract from the current codebase?"
A) Extract from codebase
Investigate codebase:
Product context: what is being built, target users, core value proposition, key user journeys and page structure
Investigate the existing design and ask targeted questions about requirements and taste using the session's available user-input mechanism; if none is available, ask in chat
After clarifying, Ask user whether ready to design in superdesign OR implement UI directly
If design in superdesign
3.1 Ensure .superdesign/design-system.md exists (setup if missing)
3.2 Identify page most relevant, and build a pixel-perfect replica in replica_html_template:
.superdesign/replica_html_template/ -.html
3.3 Create project, seeding the baseline draft from the replica HTML template (returns draftId):
→ Note: draftId in the response is the baseline draft. The design system is passed as a --context-file on the iterate step below, not on create-project.
3.4 Branch designs from baseline (use draftId from step 3.3)
superdesign iterate-design-draft \
--draft-id \
-p "Dark theme with neon accents" \
-p "Minimal with more whitespace" \
-p "Bold gradients and shadows" \
--mode branch \
--context-file .superdesign/design-system.md
# Inspirations
superdesign search-prompts --query ""
superdesign search-prompts --tags "style"
superdesign get-prompts --slugs "" # index; add --full for full bodies
superdesign extract-website --url https://example.com --design-md # style guide; add --brand/--tokens/--content-structure/--clone for more
# Canvas - Create project
# Optional --template
seeds the first (baseline) draft from an HTML file.
# The design system is passed as --context-file on the draft/iterate commands, not here.
superdesign create-project --title "X"
superdesign create-project --title "X" --template ./index.html
# Iterate: replace mode (single variation, updates in place)
superdesign iterate-design-draft --draft-id -p "..." --mode replace
# Iterate: Explore multiple versions & variations (each prompt = one variation, prompt should be just directional, do not specify color, style, let superdesign design expert fill in details, you just give direction)
superdesign iterate-design-draft --draft-id -p "dark theme" -p "minimal" -p "bold" --mode branch
# Iterate: Auto explore (only give exploration direction, and let Superdesign fill in details, e.g. explore different styles; Default do not use this)
superdesign iterate-design-draft --draft-id -p "..." --mode branch --count 3
# Fetch & get designs
superdesign fetch-design-nodes --project-id
superdesign get-design --draft-id --json # full HTML payload; or --output
to write to a file
# Create new design from scratch without any reference - ONLY use this for creating brand new design, default NEVER use this
superdesign create-design-draft --project-id --title "X" -p "..."
