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#design#claude#figma#more#code#same#great#designers#don#product

Discussion (293 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

pilgrim018 minutes ago
On Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Alexander defines design as the rationalization of the forces that define a problem. You’ll won’t find a better definition. But people tend to think design is the synthesis and its results. This misunderstanding of the role of design and the designer is responsible for all the unfit designs we encounter on a daily basis. Anyone equipped with a synthesis tool and feeling empowered to quickly and cheaply generate forms will almost inevitably become blind to the very nature of the underlying problems they set to solve. They’ll be fitting the problem to the available forms. They’ll skip the understanding, the conversations, the conflicts and disagreements, and happily and wrongly assume a design problem can be solved hermetically, in isolation. They’ll think quality is a factor of aesthetics, when in truth, aesthetics is an effect; nevertheless these effects is all they’ll have control over, as it’s all the tool can do. The tool will hinder their ability to be rational; to see the inner structures; to find the hidden but essential semantics; to create the ontologies that’ll support not only the immediate synthesis, but that will sustain the evolution of the design over its lifetime. They’ll be denied the enlightenment that comes with gradual, slow construction; the only place and moment where innovative ideas reveal themselves. They’ll be impoverished and confuse output with agency. I feel sorry for anyone that will think using tools equals doing design, because of the truly marvelous human experiences that they’ll miss, and that could never be replaced by the shallow pride of empty achievement.
bauerd2 minutes ago
This is a really verbose way to say that using generative AI has a detrimental effect on the user because one deprives themselves of the learning experience.
mathisfun12311 minutes ago
> because of the truly marvelous human experiences that they’ll miss

when people wax philosophical/poetical about what is essentially capital production already i'm always so perplexed - do you not realize that you're not doing art/you're not an artisan? your labor is always actively being transformed into a product sold on a market. there are no "marvelous human experiences", there is only production and consumption.

> They’ll be impoverished and confuse output with agency

ironic.

pjmorris2 minutes ago
Whatever the merits or demerits of 'marvelous human experiences' are from the point of view of production and consumption, the OP's conclusion leaves out the important point that Alexander's 'rationalization of forces that define a problem' produces designs that come closer to solving real-life problems (even in production and consumption) than simply putting attractive lipstick on an economic utility pig. If production isn't solving real human problems, consumers will go elsewhere.
throwfaraway48 minutes ago
What a sad take. For the sake of human satisfaction I hope this is a minority perspective.
mathisfun1232 minutes ago
> What a sad take.

just repeating the same mistake as op: sadness/happiness is completely outside the scope here. these are aspects of a job - "design" explicitly relates to products not art. and wondering about the sadness/happiness of a job is like wondering about the marketability of a piece of art - it's completely besides the point!

ljmabout 3 hours ago
I reckon something like this has only been possible to develop because of how homogenous the internet has become in terms of design ever since the glass effect and drop-shadows took over in Web 2.0 and Twitter Bootstrap entered the scene.

You'll get a competent UI with little effort but nothing truly unique or mind-blowing.

Impressive technology, but that old skool artisanal weirdness of yore only becomes more valuable and nostalgic.

mjr00about 3 hours ago
There's no shame in being homogenous and obvious, though.

If I'm building out an internal tool for, say, a hospital lawyer to search through malpractice lawsuits, I want my tool to be the most familiar, obvious, least-surprising UI/UX possible. Just stay out of the way and do what it's supposed to do.

The trick is, of course, that the human is still responsible for knowing when homogenous is fine, or when there's real value in the presentation. If you're making a website for, say, a VST plugin for musicians, your site may need to have a little more "pizzazz" to make your product more attractive to the target audience.

ezstabout 2 hours ago
That's why I miss the days of old fashioned GUI toolkits (before the web thought of itself as an application distribution platform): you would just design any app as a bag of typical controls in typical containers, and you and your users would live with the expectation that they would look and feel just like the rest of the operating system, nothing more, nothing less. Frivolity would be generally frowned upon, with the result that applications were overall more homogeneous, effective, discoverable and efficient (also in dev time).
jerf36 minutes ago
I remember when people would vigorously complain that Toolkit X was simply unsuitable for any task because it did not conform to the operating system's standard visual appearance.

Now I struggle to even define what an "operating system's standard visual appearance" is. Apple's still the best but not what they used to be on that front even so.

cruffle_duffleabout 1 hour ago
Shadcn and friends are the modern equivalent of old vb custom controls.
thewebguyd12 minutes ago
Agreed. I only make internal tools where I work, and homogeneity is great here. These apps should be the most boring apps, yet clear, easy to use, and importantly, consistent across the company.

Bootstrap was great for this. You got a clean web interface that was simple, yet didn't have to be completely ugly. Basic and functional. A form to submit POs doesn't have to stand out, be glassy, or have animations. It needs to be easy to parse and stay out of the way.

Fordecabout 2 hours ago
Of course, there is indeed no shame. There is also no pride.

Standardized interfaces are as exciting as kettle thermal switches or physical knobs in cars. Useful, probably optimal and will be around for decades to come. Also nobody talks about it, treats it with interest, or pays above market rate to work on it.

The value becomes the architecture of the value of the tool, not the interface. There is still value being generated, but the need for a highly paid UX designer evaporates, and is ultimately replaced by the above.

jrimbaultabout 2 hours ago
> Of course, there is indeed no shame. There is also no pride.

But there's is "pride" in making tools people actually use without issue

soraki_soladeadabout 2 hours ago
> There is also no pride.

Is the pride not in solving the users' problems?

> nobody talks about it, treats it with interest, or pays above market rate to work on it.

Definitely needs a citation for this one. For so many products the user isn't paying for standout design. They're paying for insight, leverage, velocity, convenience, whatever. The market definitely supports this by paying above market salaries.

Good design can be a useful differentiator but it isn't the only way for a tool or product to "spark joy" and often _fancy_ design (not good design) is used as a crutch for a subpar product.

the__alchemistabout 1 hour ago
I don't take pride in having an original UI for most tasks: I take pride in having one that's easy to use and gets the job done. I am not disrespecting people who are making a creative/artistic UI: That adds fun and life to the world. But it's not required for every project.
enraged_camelabout 2 hours ago
>> Of course, there is indeed no shame. There is also no pride.

I disagree completely. The pride should come from the value that is delivered. Specifically, this:

>> Useful, probably optimal and will be around for decades to come.

Is something to be proud of, full stop.

ilikecakeandpieabout 2 hours ago
There's a real problem with everything looking the same though. For a consumer product, you lose brand recognition. For a B2B product, you can confuse your users because Tool A and Tool B look exactly the same. You have to look hard at the name, kind of like prescription pill bottles.
Qasaurabout 1 hour ago
There is little reason to invent a completely new design system if your goal is to encourage brand recognition and prevent an operator from confusing tools.

Apple/SwiftUI has accentColor for example where you can inject a brand colour. This is subtle but effective for UI differentiation - colour is a design primitive that evokes subconscious pattern recognition and can be more effective than a complicated design framework that forces a larger context switch in the user's mind.

Bombthecat9 minutes ago
There is more to design then just buttons and colour... Like menus, options, how, where, when etc.

But I reckon, nobody cares. Just let Claude decide and go with it... Sad state for UX designers / researchers.

AstroBenabout 1 hour ago
"attractive things work better"

There have been studies showing aesthetics matter quite a bit for UX - users perceive things that are attractive as being easier to use and less frustrating.

raffael_deabout 2 hours ago
there is no problem with yellow, but if everything is yellow then that's a problem. that's the point.
slopinthebagabout 1 hour ago
The issue is that you actually don't want it to look like the modern ubiquitous UI we see everywhere, because it's some of the most jarring, least-intuitive crap we could possibly design. Even I struggle with it when trying to help my parents out, so of course they have no chance, and if they have no chance neither does the hospital lawyer. Modern UI is garbage, and thus this just outputs garbage. Believe it or not, creating good UI takes real skill and experience. You can't just slop it out and expect your tool to do what it's supposed to do.
levmiseriabout 2 hours ago
This is reducing the role of Design as some lego-blocks assembling process. And higher quality being seen as adding ‘pizzazz’.

You are right, though. Many products don’t need more than that. But I fear that this will greatly impact design innovation and progress. We might get stuck in the current UI paradigm for a long time.

ljmabout 2 hours ago
We can skip Web3... Web 4.0 is twilight gradients, glassmorphism, text size xs in tailwind, and cards and pills for every UI component. Along with self-explanatory help text acting as filler under every header.
slopinthebagabout 1 hour ago
It's no different to people trying to reduce the role of Programming to the same lego-block assembling process. And I believe the same conclusion follows.
jjk166about 2 hours ago
> You'll get a competent UI with little effort but nothing truly unique or mind-blowing.

90+% of attempts at making a truly unique or mind-blowing UI produce a mind-blowingly bad UI. For 0.5 seconds of wow factor, you've added substantial unnecessary friction. Outside of art projects where that wow factor is the point, it really should not be attempted, most certainly not by someone without the appropriate skillset.

The old skool artisanal weirdness was not a purposeful stylistic choice, it was a bunch of people trying to do the best they could with crappy tools. There may be some je ne sais quoi which is lost with the shift to mass adoption, but the reason for the mass adoption of these particular design trends was that they were objectively superior.

alberto46717 minutes ago
I agree, only the very best designs (and their designers) can nicely mix utility and beauty (or the wow factor, it’s hard to define).

And people sometimes overestimate their designs because beauty is subjective, and because all children are beautiful in the eyes of their parent.

Also, there’s a reason why the mass adopted plastic, monobloc, stackable chair design is worldwide common and is studied as a cornerstone of design.

crazygringoabout 2 hours ago
> You'll get a competent UI with little effort but nothing truly unique or mind-blowing.

Which is exactly what I want. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a competent UI?

Why do people celebrate consistency and uniformity in desktop apps, wanting to crucify developers for not following platform idioms and guidelines... and then suddenly want things that are "truly unique" or "mind-blowing" or "artisanal weirdness" when it comes to a web app?

A competent UI with little effort is a godsend.

thunkyabout 3 hours ago
> You'll get a competent UI with little effort but nothing truly unique or mind-blowing.

This is exactly what I want in a UI.

ljmabout 2 hours ago
The remaining issue is that even an AI-generated UI needs considerable UX input in order to work well, especially when you have to fit it around domain specific knowledge, use-cases, and prior art. Is it for power users or not? All that.

At risk of shifting the goalposts on what I originally said, unique here isn't meant to mean quirky or weird but, simply, something that hasn't been done before, or hasn't been done as effectively.

This is the challenge for B2B startups that are switching to LLM-based development and are trying to offer more than the reselling of cloud compute at a markup with specialised functionality, because AI turns SaaS into a sexy version of MS Access.

qazxcvbnmlpabout 2 hours ago
Exactly. If I am making a tool, I want the users mental energy to be spent on their domain, not bespoke weirdness of my ui choices.
adriandabout 2 hours ago
There are still SO MANY insanely ugly, hard-to-use, absolutely horrible apps out there though. Sure, in consumer-focused apps, there's a lot of competition and pretty much everything popular is well-designed. But in enterprise? My god, it's still a massive shitshow.

The hilarious thing is that I would be willing to bet than in a decade, it's STILL a massive shitshow in enterprise. That's because the problem with enterprise software is not that good design is all that difficult to pull off (it just requires caring!) It's that the people making enterprise software have terrible taste and can't even see (I am convinced) that the thing they built is ugly and hard-to-use.

jjk166about 1 hour ago
> It's that the people making enterprise software have terrible taste and can't even see (I am convinced) that the thing they built is ugly and hard-to-use.

Generally the issue with enterprise is that its designed to appeal to the stakeholders who will make the purchasing decision, not the person who is actually going to use it. The people making it may have great taste and know damn well what they could do to make it more usable, but if a clean and easy tool doesn't match someone's preconceived notion of what the purchaser thinks the tool ought to look like then it's not going to fly.

p_stuart8213 minutes ago
IMO it doesn't flatten design into one thing. it splits it. cheap obvious work at scale, and a way smaller premium tier for real authorship. the middle is what actually gets crushed.
afavourabout 1 hour ago
That’s good design though. Users want consistency. Truly unique design is awesome but it belongs with experiential stuff, not a CRUD app.

You might just as well bemoan the homogeneity of Windows 95 apps. All those gray buttons in the bottom right of windows.

snek_caseabout 1 hour ago
Sort of. At the moment there is a fad of websites that mess with your scrolling and have very low content density. They are all trying to imitate Apple's marketing pages. Most startup websites do this. It's not at all good design, it's user-hostile, but it's trendy and popular right now.
threetonesunabout 3 hours ago
I'd argue it's relatively unimpressive given the ability to create design systems and apply themes to them to create relatively generic content has existed for a long time now.

Sure, some prototypes will be spun up more quickly. But if this was a real problem large companies faced it would have been solved in software already.

ctothabout 3 hours ago
> if this was a real problem large companies faced it would have been solved in software already.

Good for everybody who isn't a large company then?

threetonesunabout 2 hours ago
I wasn't suggesting that the problem would be solved by large companies internally. If anything this is worse for smaller companies, who have already solved this problem for decades at this point by simply not caring about design too much and using the web UI framework du jour. We've already seen with Tailwind that moving to "just put money in the AI machine" comes at the expense of open source UI framework sustainability, with the upside of being slightly faster at making a first-pass boring design.
armchairhackerabout 1 hour ago
Did you try asking Claude Design to generate a complex UI with lots of custom details?

Or “2000s aesthetic” for something before Web 2.0 (although you’ll get a generic 2000s aesthetic unless you provide more detail).

nunodonatoabout 1 hour ago
> Impressive technology, but that old skool artisanal weirdness of yore only becomes more valuable and nostalgic.

but does it still exists? Even without AI everyone is utilizating the same css frameworks, same libraries and templates... design is pretty much boring these days. CSS Zen Garden anyone?

operatingthetan24 minutes ago
>but nothing truly unique or mind-blowing.

This is most every corporate website.

carimuraabout 2 hours ago
Music isn't really new either it's just recombining riffs already created. But the recombinations create new experiences. Might be the same with design?
ljm44 minutes ago
AI can already generate music and it stands out a mile both in terms of the lyrical content and how middle of the road it all is. People will create some slop on Suno and lip-sync to it on TikTok because they absolutely don't sound like a thousand country singers blended into one.

So it's competent, for sure, but that is damning it with faint praise.

dayvidabout 1 hour ago
Twitter Bootstrap did more to elevate design on the web than reduce artisinal quality. Most of it was bad and definitely not ADA/other compliant
tcp_handshakerabout 2 hours ago
So this will turn out to be the most expensive web template business. Not really seeing how they expect to make money.

I guess post IPO, after the insiders cash in out of lock period its irrelevant.

ljmabout 2 hours ago
It's a legitimate boon for throwing together little internal apps, mind.

I can slap something together with Claude over a few evenings to fill a gap on tooling, or I can wrestle with Jira and CI and all that to tie things together with their own integrations.

No thanks, I'll just take the API keys and build on top, to my exact specifications, and the interface will be passable even if it needs a lot of polish. Tailwind has worked wonders for that.

voidfuncabout 1 hour ago
Homogenous design is a good thing. The internet isn't nearly homogeneous enough actually. The mid-90s desktop apps got it right and we've been regressing ever since then because web designers are like kids with crayons.
Bridged7756about 1 hour ago
UI Design is an art. Like any other art, it's bound to have constant currents and counter currents. More than the designer's whims, it's the population's need for novelty, generational differences, and the desire of companies to stand out what is driving the wheel.
slopinthebagabout 1 hour ago
The early web was filled with wacky and unique websites and it's a ubiquitously loved period of the internet.
godzillabrennusabout 1 hour ago
Nothing screams old school more than 98.css https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
estabout 2 hours ago
> how homogenous the internet has become in terms of design

I think it's because Steve Jobs killed Flash.

quackedabout 3 hours ago
I hate it so much. Ah, your website/app/program is comprised of rounded-corner cards in four colors (color/pale color/white/grey), with a dark theme. Your clickable text isn't visually distinguishable from your non-clickable text. All of your logos are sans-serif SVGs. Your settings and action menus are split across four different primary hidden locations. Your scroll bars disappear even when there's text hidden offscreen. You try to guess what I want to click on by showing a series of competing horizontally-organized pills over the top of the content instead of just giving me a consistent set of action buttons.

AI companies: "good news, everyone! We've automated all those steps so they're even easier to generate!"

I think the same thing is happening in physical construction. Ah, I see you've designed a new box with four primary color tones and slightly offset vertical lines to break up the windows.

robabout 3 hours ago
What's great is I can take what you just said now and use it as context when generating my new DESIGN.md system and making sure it doesn't look like any of the other stuff. Thank you! Superpowers will show me all the options in their built-in visual companion when brainstorming. :)
Maxionabout 3 hours ago
This aestethic is useful though for SaaS apps and the like that know themselves to be generic.
codegeekabout 2 hours ago
"Twitter Bootstrap". Havent heard that term for years. The OG of CSS frameworks.
coffeebeqnabout 2 hours ago
Most companies I’ve worked at still use bootstrap or something that looks very much like it for most internal web tools
volkkabout 3 hours ago
that's how i've felt about all AI design. the harnesses get better and cooler, and the outputs up the baseline of utter crap to "whoa that doesn't look bad at all!" which works for probably 90% of the web, but anything truly unique still requires a lot of human taste. maybe that will change one day, but I hope it doesn't.
ezstabout 2 hours ago
By the nature of LLMs, there's no reason to think it would.
rustystumpabout 2 hours ago
I am not so sure. I lean towards client work on desktop/mobile/web and while the initial output is workable as new requirements come in it starts to fall apart largely because the vibe coder doesn’t understand design basics. It is one of those you dont know what you dont know and not that ai cannot write workable css or w/e.
SpyCoder772 minutes ago
This explains why Mike Krieger left the board of Figma (https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/16/anthropic-cpo-leaves-figma...)
Growtikaabout 1 hour ago
For my agency this won't replace Figma or designers. It's just a really useful tool to express yourself and communicate intent.

Before these tools, when a client wanted a specific section built, we'd spend hours hunting references across the web. The output always ended up feeling like a mesh of 2-3 sites, never fully unique. Then we'd burn more time explaining the intent to the client's designers and devs, usually with multiple rounds because words don't convey layout well.

Now we throw a quick mockup together in Claude or Lovable and send it. The designer gets the idea in 30 seconds instead of a 45-minute call, then pushes it further with their own taste and the client's branding.

It's not replacing designers. Most clients don't know what they want until they see it. These tools collapse that feedback loop from weeks to minutes, so the designer actually spends their time on the parts that need human taste, not on decoding a vague brief.

mickeyp11 minutes ago
Indeed. Kitbashing is a thing, and it was always a thing. Designers I worked with would spend hours doomscrolling pinterest, google images, etc. looking for their, uh... 'spark' when they were given a briefing.

This is just a really cool way of building.

I'm impressed. I tried Google Stitch but it was slow and useless. Sad, because Gemini has a pretty good creative flair, ironically enough.

GenerWorkabout 2 hours ago
If you look at Figmas stock price, it started falling right at 11 AM as this news was released.

Anyways, this is 100% a shot at Figma, but also catching Lovable in the crossfire. If anybody from Anthropic is reading this, if you keep developing this with features in Figma and other design tools, you'll have a major hit on your hands.

Bilal_ioabout 2 hours ago
The folks at Wall Street do not understand this does not replace Figma.

Figma is targeted towards designers who create thoughtful design systems and cohesive UIs and who don't code, while this is targeted towards vibe coders who can't design. Two different circles that intersect to some level.

But like you said, if anthropic adds the tools in Figma, only then they can can take customers from Figma IMO.

qkeastabout 2 hours ago
>Figma is targeted towards designers who create thoughtful design systems and cohesive UIs and who don't code, while this is targeted towards vibe coders who can't design. Two different circles that intersect to some level.

The challenge is that this sets an expectation of what "design" is, de-valuing the former and shifting us culturally towards the latter and a space where "design" is seen as a subjective visual exercise with little intrinsic value.

jugabout 2 hours ago
I think there's a parallel here in advertising and what AI has done there. It's clearly used nowadays, a seasoned user can probably spot it straight away even if it gets harder over time. Still, it's deemed "good enough". The savings versus having a team and shooting on location etc. can be enormous. Even before this launch, I see it on the web. It's already happening.
atonseabout 2 hours ago
Tools like Figma are for an era (and persona) who still wants to have all the various knobs and dials to dial in exactly what they want. And that is one way of working if, like you said people are trying to be more thoughtful and know exactly what they want.

But for the other 95% of people, being able to just say "ok can you make it look more modern" and have 4 variants in 5 mins, (like me) Figma will lose users like me.

But then again I was never a "designer" – more a builder.

simplylukeabout 1 hour ago
I'm much closer to your persona than a professional designer. 5 years ago if I was going to spin up a landing page for a side project I was probably getting something mediocre together with bootstrap or material UI. Today I'd probably get something marginally better together with a tool like this. In both scenarios I'd end up with an undifferentiated but acceptable end state.

I've never paid for a figma seat. A couple of employers have so that I can collaborate with designers in the product, but I don't think this changes that.

In an era where it's cheaper and more common to end up at that undifferentiated state, the ability for companies to make their products go above and beyond it is more valuable, not less.

I see this across the board with AI. It lowers the bar to get to passable, but as slop fills the internet we're already seeing people place more value in good products, good writing, good art, thoughtful code architecture, etc. Everyone and their cousin's uber driver is vibe coding a SaaS startup no one's going to pay for right now.

nothinkjustaiabout 2 hours ago
Spending 5 minutes on the most user facing, tactile part of your products? Sounds like less of a builder and more of a slopper to me :)
islewisabout 1 hour ago
> Figma is targeted towards designers who create thoughtful design systems and cohesive UIs and who don't code, while this is targeted towards vibe coders who can't design. Two different circles that intersect to some level.

this overlap has been widening incredibly quickly. lots of designers are now writing code with the help of cursor, claude code, etc.

even if you believe "real designers" wont ever use this product, it's not hard to see how a low barrier-of-entry tool could affect Figams bottom line. slowing down Figma's adoption from the new wave of entry-level designers who dont already have muscle memory would not at all surprise me at all.

3sdfs16 minutes ago
Nevertheless, Dylan has done a bad job in communicating stuff about Figma to the stock market and why it won't get toppled.

He should probably go and let someone else take the reigns.

whywhywhywhy33 minutes ago
All Figma has spent the last 2 years doing is trying to get designers to use their Cursor/Claude Code text to code app.

Not convinced Figma cares about traditional design craft anymore.

ziml77about 2 hours ago
I think they understand that the people running businesses are going to look at this vs a human who uses Figma and realize how much more cost and time efficient it is to pay for a machine than a human.
motoxproabout 2 hours ago
Thats like saying Claude Code is targeted at coders who cant code (which I know some poeple believe)
aurareturnabout 1 hour ago
Maybe Figma is better for large teams. Even here, teams are getting smaller and smaller.

But for me, I will never use it again.

seizethecheeseabout 2 hours ago
Just last week, I asked the designer on my team to try working in Codex instead of Figma. It’s just not a great workflow to pass a figma file to a developer to implement. She hasn’t wanted to go back yet…
xnxabout 2 hours ago
> Figma is targeted towards designers who create thoughtful design systems

How many such people does the world need? Probably less than 1,000. Not a very big market for Figma.

0gs34 minutes ago
how do you define "need?" by my estimation, there are more than 1000 software products in the world, so i do not think 1000 is anywhere near enough.
qingcharles43 minutes ago
This is 100% a response to "Stitch With Google" which has been doing amazing work in this space for a long time now, and is Google's answer to Lovable.

https://stitch.withgoogle.com/

I'm now pasting all my Stitch output into Claude Design to see what happens.

edit: First impressions are great. It asked me a ton of really great questions about my design aspirations and direction, which were incredibly relevant and insightful. Waiting to see what it makes.

edit2: It did astonishingly well with the first design pass. Really outstanding. This is probably going to be my primary prototyping tool until the Next Best Thing(tm) drops in a few weeks.

AstroBenabout 1 hour ago
Figma's stock has been on a sharp downward trend over the last year. This isn't a notice-able change to their stock price at all. They're down 30% just in the last month, with many days being -5% to -10%.

They're down 80% over the last year. Ouch.

codegeekabout 2 hours ago
On the other hand, Canva made a genius move to partner with Claude for this. One of my favorite products as a non designer.
chopete3about 1 hour ago
We all hope this to be easy but it is extremely difficult to get 2 departments with different reporting structure work together. Getting 2 companies work together for mutual benefit is like asking 2 political parties to work together.
ex-aws-dudeabout 2 hours ago
Isn't this something Figma could easily integrate? Then you'd have the best of both worlds
GenerWorkabout 2 hours ago
You already can use Claude Code with Figma. This is looking more like a Figma competitor than just Claude Code.
ktimespiabout 2 hours ago
Is this really that big of a moat for Figma to cross though? They would have a much easier time integrating AI than the other way around
_aavaa_about 2 hours ago
I’d be more concerned with the stock’s trajectory (continual decline) since the IPO than with whatever happened since 11AM.
danish00111about 1 hour ago
I started using Pencil for my UI designs and they just introduced animations and I was like they just kicked Figma and now this. Figma might just become another Blockbuster.
rvzabout 2 hours ago
This tells me that Lovable is certainly not worth $6.6B.
techpression30 minutes ago
That valuation is more insane than most, I would’ve loved to hear the arguments for it, it was a given they would have to compete with the companies who provides them with the models, anyone who thought they would just leave that market alone is a damn fool (the vendor lock-ins are great too, add some hosting, domain selling, etc and you got free money).
martinaldabout 2 hours ago
Interesting! I wrote this approach up (more or less - extract design system -> make templates -> export) some time ago and I've found it unbelievably powerful: https://martinalderson.com/posts/how-to-make-great-looking-c....

I use it all day every day with Claude Code. I sometimes wonder past code if this has had the biggest impact on my day to day productivity, either having to make do with semi-bad looking reports or have a designer design them (which is slow).

Sort of feel sorry for Figma in a way though, given all the "partnerships" (highlighting their MCPs) and case studies they've done with Anthropic and then they release this. I note there isn't a testimonial from them this time.

I'm surprised how poorly Figma have used "AI" in general - given they were the "gold standard" in taking emerging technologies (WASM etc) and making an incredible product. The Figma Make thing was incredibly underwhelming, I managed to extract the system prompt out and it's basically just Gemini 3 Pro with a design prompt. Perhaps the original team has left?

They are extremely exposed imo. While all the UI/UX designers will continue using it for the forseeable, I strongly suspect a lot of their (A/M)RR was coming from extra seats for PMs, developers, etc to view and export and do commenting on the files - not core designer usage. I think a lot of this just won't happen on Figma as much.

whywhywhywhy28 minutes ago
>I strongly suspect a lot of their (A/M)RR was coming from extra seats for PMs, developers, etc

their seats system has always been brutal it’s extremely easy to have the seats balloon if you’re not careful and if they’re yearly there is only a 30 day window a year where you can cancel them when the banner to do so appears.

coffeebeqnabout 2 hours ago
I think you hit the nail on the head - I bet Adobe and Figma get most of their sold seats from people who don’t really need the full tool and are basically just using it as a viewer and to make very small adjustments or notes
aurareturn27 minutes ago
I tried Figma again after a few years expecting that they'd surely have a tool that lets me describe a design and then it generates a Figma design file.

Nope. Figma Make first renders an HTML/React app with your design. Then you could convert to a Figma design file if you have a pro plan. Extremely underwhelming.

There's hardly any difference between using Figma and just designing it with Codex and Claude Code. And now, Claude Design seems to get it right.

artisin8 minutes ago
Having generated ~250k web design images the past few months, I've concluded generative models, circa 2026, still suck at it. Presumably because the difference between an 'OK' design and a 'Great' one is pretty darn small and far too nuanced. That said, Imagen easily takes the cake for workable design creativity, but even then, it takes 1000ish gens to get something decent, maybe 200 if you aren't too picky.
3sdfs6 minutes ago
I personally dont think Anthropic thinks this is a hit product per se. Its all about keeping the hype alive - we all saw what 'SaaS-polcalypse' did.

The amount of hype is too much for me - its smoke and mirrors. A firm that knew it was on track to change the world (as much as they have been boosting) would not do this. Much like how Apple kept complete silence about the iPhone and then shocked the world.

taylorlapeyreabout 1 hour ago
It really feels like Anthropic's product area is extremely overextended at this point. If they want to extend themselves horizontally in an unlimited fashion, they will need unlimited focus, and agents can't supply that. Things will fall through the cracks. Why should I believe that Anthropic will care about this product in 2, 3 years? Whereas I firmly believe that Figma will care greatly about its product in that time
3sdfs4 minutes ago
Ultimately OAI and ANthropic are destined to crash and burn - they have gambled a lot on LLM's paving the way toward accelerated research, discovery etc etc. But its not happened and its not happening - the only 'large' revenue stream they have all converged on is selling tokens in relation to software production. Which is pretty anti-climatic given all the hyping.

Keeping the hype alive through to IPO is critical now.

spyckie225 minutes ago
It is officially the 2010 Google era at Anthropic (the era where Google released tons of new products and spread themselves too thin).

Anyone remember Google's social media platform??? Google Plus?

This is a good era to be in! Its the era of product experimentation.

As long as you realize that 90% of the products will not be supported long term if it doesn't contribute to bottom line revenue, then just appreciate it for what it is, a bunch of smart people trying to create useful products.

Just don't be surprised if Anthropic goes the Google route, which is shutting down the majority of the products that are too small / not successful enough to impact their revenue.

tomashertusabout 1 hour ago
Are they, though? My thinking is that their roadmap is heavily focused on the SDLC and solving problems related to software development, so their model will be optimized for that domain. That leaves room in the market for models that are specialized in other areas of expertise.
throwaway04120713 minutes ago
Agree. I'm building a software factory at my job right now that leverages Claude Code. It seems like almost daily Anthropic is releasing new products or features on existing products that seem to overlap with the factory I'm building. I still think my project provides a more coherent workflow from a SDLC standpoint, bringing an idea to a ticket, to a prompt, to a plan, and finally coding and creating a PR, but it definitely feels like Anthropic is heading in that direction as well. It'll be interesting if they eventually bring all of this together into a single uber tool.
ttul25 minutes ago
I threw my sales deck at it and asked it to implement our brand guidelines (attaching that as a PDF). It did a great job and then began giving me internal server errors... I'm going to assume this part of their model farm is totally overwhelmed.
ossa-maabout 3 hours ago
The more I think about it the more this isn't good for design [EDIT], for a few reasons:

- The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive. An AI model is incapable of that, it's uninspired, it will absolutely converge to the norm and homogeneity (you see it everywhere now, just scroll on ShowHN and take a look at the UIs) and produce the safest design that appeals to its understanding of the ideal user.

- Good designers will reject this, they prefer to be hands-on and draw from multiple sources of inspiration which is what Figma boards and Canva is good for, also mainly for cross-collaboration. If you've seen how quickly a great design engineer can prototype you'll know that "speed" they advertise in this video is not worth the tradeoff.

- Creatives typically have a very very very high aversion to AI.

- Non-designers will not see a purpose for this tool, basic design can already be done through Claude Code and Claude.ai, I fail to see what this could offer unless they leverage a model that is more creative and unique by default (you can not prompt/context/harness engineer creativity believe me I've tried).

- Design is a lot more than just UI. Tools like this ignore so many other important aspects like: motion, typography, images, weight, whitespace, sound, feel.

gpt5about 3 hours ago
> The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive

Designing a user inteface involves thousands of small decisions. When trading off pros/cons for each of these decisions, in 99% of the cases, the right answer is ‘optimize familiarity.

That’s why Android and iOS look the same, and why the small differences between them are where contention happen.

If you adopt existing patterns, your users would be instantly familiar with your app, and the design will not get in their way.

ossa-maabout 2 hours ago
You're arguing for familiarity in tactful design, while I agree that for most users this is a good thing, repeatability of existing patterns does create that immediate familiarity.

HOWEVER, that familiarity is only a virtue because someone, once, deviated hard enough that their deviation became the new familiar. AI can only optimise toward the current snapshot of "familiar". It cannot produce the next one. If designers outsource all their thinking to a model even in tactful design we would never have groundbreaking design concepts like "pull to refresh" or the command palette.

qkeastabout 1 hour ago
>Designing a user inteface involves thousands of small decisions. When trading off pros/cons for each of these decisions…

Which needs to be done intentionally in context, not homogeneously as a rapid output of a generative tool.

toomimabout 3 hours ago
"An AI model is incapable of that."

"Good designers will reject this."

^ Famous last words.

Sir_Twistabout 2 hours ago
I could see there being an 80/20-style argument for this sort of tool being used for more generic usecases, with "good designers" using Figma et al. for programs where the UI itself is a selling point.
ossa-maabout 2 hours ago
I will stand by the first point unless models start being trained with different objectives instead of RLHF's three objectives: Helpfulness, Harmlessness and Instruction-following

I will very likely be wrong on the second point.

ctothabout 2 hours ago
I noticed in your list that you didn't mention accessibility. I would personally rather have an accessible design than one which is "original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive." and here we are.
ossa-maabout 2 hours ago
I should have mentioned accessibility. It supports my argument more than yours. Accessibility like captions, voice, keyboard nav, dark mode are all a deviation from the norm by a minority (something AI is completely incapable of doing) and a fight against familiarity which now serves as a great benefit to the majority.
ctothabout 2 hours ago
This ... This is simply not true. I use a screen reader. I am using it right now. I can confirm that AI-generated code, by default, is far, far more accessible, cares far more about keyboard nav, about DOM order, about using the right semantic HTML, about the things that I care about than your average human-designed slop.

And no, it doesn't just add ARIA to everything as is so typical by poor practitioners.

dayvidabout 1 hour ago
This is a great bridge between non-designers with taste and designers who can't fully technically implement their solutions (or want to more rapidly prototype their solutions). Well done AI implementation is like cosmetic surgery. The trashiest implementations you can tell immediately and the more tasteful ones are subtle
Lihh27about 1 hour ago
> The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive

most of those "breakthroughs" were just constraint hacks. no room for a reload button. no room for another menu.

enterprise buyers don't pay for counterintuitive. they pay so the new hire finds save without training.

sobellianabout 1 hour ago
IMO AI will make plain the divergence between "good design" and what people actually want. You're absolutely right that from an artistic perspective, it will produce the heat death of UI. I just struggle to think if teams building will actually care. Boring but polished is completely fine for SaaS.
Orasabout 3 hours ago
Data suggest different outcomes, there was always a way to standardise interfaces, from Twitter bootstrap, all the way to shadcn.

Not everyone is looking for unique design, 70% of the web is still using Wordpress. I would say majority prefer familiarity and appreciate uniqueness.

recitedropperabout 2 hours ago
Plus: So much of excellent user interface design is done through iterating on feedback from live humans testing it with their human sensory system.

Until we have embodied AI's with eyes and hands that provide good enough approximations, the aspect of design bottlenecked on human experience will stay bottlenecked.

paul7986about 2 hours ago
Web design / digital design is a dying field as businesses will start paying one person who does 3 to 4 roles (PM, UX Research, Design and UI Development - tho why use a design tool for web stuff when AI tools generate designs in code), as well now tons of ppl can do this work using AI tools. Further, is the future of digital experiences user interfaces aka the web or will there be an AI Phone where everything is done / seen on the lock screen (AI generates the visuals as you text or talk to it) and or its more of a text and voice digital experience less UI.

Overall after being laid off in January and a 17 year UX Research/Design/Dev career Im starting school in my early 50s to change careers.

itsevrgrn27 minutes ago
i'm also curious what you're switching to
Uncorrelatedabout 2 hours ago
What career are you aiming to switch to?
cjf101about 1 hour ago
I hate to hand anything to Generative AI tools, but

While Great design breaks the mould, Very Good design is about surfacing the most expected outcomes for any action which reduces friction and lets people get work done. And this generation of Generative tools is very good at identifying the most common/most expected response to a prompt.

jayd16about 2 hours ago
You could have said the same thing about powerpoint vs high quality marketing departments. The "pros don't want this" argument doesn't really hold weight.

This is for non-designers to crank out slop with less effort. They can still be swayed by all the shiny knobs to feel in control.

weinzierlabout 1 hour ago
"create polished visual work like designs, prototypes, slides, one-pagers, and more."

I use Opus to generate Typst for that and I'm already pretty happy with that approach. It gives me a degree of control I do not have with other methods, because

1. Typst is really powerful

2. Opus is really good at surgically modifying Typst

I basically never look at the Typst code for this. Telling Opus visually what I want changed is usually good enough.

moelfabout 1 hour ago
how does Opus see the output? via HTML (which Typst can output) or visual tokens?
ossa-maabout 1 hour ago
How does it compare to LaTeX?
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ej88about 3 hours ago
This is cool!

Seems like Claude is actually building almost like a layered Figma wireframe that you can do fine grained adjustments afterwards (e.g. adjust font size).

Interesting that Canva provided a quote of support. I'm not familiar with the differentiation, but it seems like this will directly siphon customers from Canva, right?

npilkabout 2 hours ago
There's an "export to Canva" button in Claude Design, so perhaps they're hoping this will be another entry point for new users, or that they'll be able to "lock in" as the default design software for Claude users.
mistic9214 minutes ago
This Ai will help vibe coders but won't be better than UI/UX designer with experience. We saw huge difference in our app when we have started working with one.
jayd16about 2 hours ago
So how much of this is fully generated vs AI running through all the knobs on template widgets?

Is that globe made from whole cloth or is there a bespoke "telecom globe" widget that it dropped in? Could I ask for mock up of molecules with the same fidelity of knobs, down to nucleus size and such?

mpegabout 2 hours ago
It's generated, when you try it you can see this is mostly a harness around claude opus 4.7 that helps it create a good design plan, it also supports asking you questions as it goes along, letting you review and feedback on mockups, etc, but ultimately if you look at what it's generating as it does it – it's just code
jayd16about 2 hours ago
"Its just code" is meaningless to me. Is the code its generating using mostly well known widgets with predefined knobs, or is every element completely custom and the knobs are created on the spot with slightly different naming and function every time?

I actually think I would prefer the more boring "it composes well known widgets" because then there's a chance I could just use this to generate a presentation layer and integrate it instead of new blobs of code I need to essentially reverse engineer or remake.

mpegabout 2 hours ago
Depends of what you prompt it... if you tell it to use react and shadcn, it will use that.
sbszllrabout 3 hours ago
It's interesting how OpenAI and Anthropic effectively mass dumped a bunch of similar features in the last two days.

I wonder what other features they're cooking right now.

fassssstabout 2 hours ago
It’s because they embrace their coding models to ship new things at light speed.
irishcoffeeabout 3 hours ago
I think that's the wrong question. What kind of shadow spy network must exist around all these companies such that they all happen to be working on the same features at the same time.
embedding-shapeabout 3 hours ago
> What kind of shadow spy network must exist around all these companies such that they all happen to be working on the same features at the same time.

Stuff like that happened even before the invention of the telephone, humans within the same geographic location is even more predicable, so surely this shouldn't come as a surprise.

clayhacksabout 2 hours ago
Yeah the spy network is just all these people living in a 7 mile radius of each other (San Francisco) and have lots of overlap in social circles
jonluccabout 2 hours ago
Frequently, two movies with very similar concepts drop the same year. Is that because they're spying, or because the companies make decisions in similar ways based on similar input information?
sbszllrabout 3 hours ago
It's possible and even likely there's industrial espionage going on. But imo, you don't need that. I've worked in cutting edge industries, and even when you don't know what your competition is doing, there are usually only so many logical next steps.
xpeabout 2 hours ago
This. / Who remembers the "birth" of crowdfunding? Why did so much seem to happen at all once? The most likely explanation imo is that it was "in the air" -- we share culture and ideas. These ideas don't have to be stolen to co-occur... quite the opposite.
xpeabout 2 hours ago
The human brain strikes again. It is built into our cognitive machinery to look for patterns and naively ascribe causation. We're not rational beings that sometimes mess up. We're a clusterf--k of cognitive biases all the way down.*

Cool pattern! Sure, maybe there is something there.** And/or maybe our brain is doing "conspiracy theorizing lite". Its all on the same spectrum -- the same flawed cognitive machinery trying to operate in a weird modern world quite different from where we came from.

A better way: write out your favorite hypothesis. But don't stop there... keep going... write out many hypotheses. Then find ways to test them. To tap into our best selves, I recommend The Scout Mindset (book). Here is an infographic summary of part of it: https://imgur.com/qN31PX8

Probably not a better way: float one's first gut feels to the Internet phrased as i.e. the better question and feed empty calories to our pattern-craving brains. There is reason some of our brain functions are considered higher order.

* Maybe I'm overstating this. Let me know? I want to read Rationality and the Reflective Mind by Keith Stanovich (https://academic.oup.com/book/5930) as a counterpoint to the usual suspects (such as Tversky & Kahneman)

** But what is there. What kind of pattern? What kind(s) of causation could be at work? See Judea Pearl's "ladder of causation". Nice write-up here: https://samuel-book.github.io/causal_inference_notebook/pear...

hudoabout 3 hours ago
404 Page not found when clicking on their link https://claude.ai/design at the end of the article! Vibe coding to prod, gone wrong?
anonfunctionabout 3 hours ago
Fourth thing in a row they've announced that I wanted to try and couldn't.

Previous comment with the prior 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47794419

mpegabout 2 hours ago
It's rolling out progressively, it works for me – it actually seems very polished, the examples are really good; and it lets you create your design system from your codebase
alpbabout 3 hours ago
It's rolling out progressively throughout the day.
baal80spamabout 3 hours ago
Perfect, that's CC design for you :-)
namanyaygabout 3 hours ago
The Anthropic team looks to be eating all the usecases and application layer. I personally know of many figma + AI startups that are going to feel shaken up with this launch.

Anthropic has distribution on their side, their engineers are excellent (I have ran with them across the ggb in the past and they work 12 hours plus a day regularly.)

I think what actually might be slowing them down is the public releases and pr lol, not ideas or execution

subscribedabout 3 hours ago
12+ hours a day regularly?

What a toxic workplace :/

Sol-about 3 hours ago
They are all very wealthy, or are about to be at the IPO. Seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.

And money aside, it is certainly one of the most exciting companies in the world to work for.

Noumenon72about 2 hours ago
It's a horseshoe where the worst companies make you work 12 hours and the best companies make you want to work 12 hours.
namanyaygabout 2 hours ago
Exactly the engineers I've talked to are all so EXCITED
H8crilAabout 2 hours ago
Didn't know that anyone needed to hear that, but here it is: "hot" companies often have such workdays, especially pre-IPO and with such a fast growth.
adrian_babout 2 hours ago
"Hot" companies with stupid managers often have such workdays.

In the case of engineers and programmers, the amount of useful completed "work" has only a very weak correlation with the length of the workdays.

Good engineers or programmers will think anyway most of the time about the problems that they must currently solve, regardless whether they are in the office or at home or in any other place, and regardless whether to an external observer they appear to be "working" or they appear to do nothing.

Programmers who spend all day typing lines of code into a computer, are more likely to not be competent programmers, because otherwise they would have found ways to automate such activities that require continuous physical involvement, making impossible the allocation of enough time for thinking about the right solution.

If whatever they do does not require true thinking, then that is the kind of job that can be done by AI agents.

namanyaygabout 2 hours ago
Yeah exactly, if you're seeing your own stock go up like the Anthropic employees are, it's gonna be hard to not work 12 hours
wmeredithabout 3 hours ago
> their engineers are excellent... they work 12 hours plus a day regularly

What? In my experience people who are good at their job can get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Working 12 hours a day is obsession, no competence. There can be overlap, but there is no causation.

fg137about 1 hour ago
You can look at the number of github issues on the claude code repo and think about how many hours a day people need to work to address them.

Then look at the changelog of Claude Code. They are releasing daily.

namanyaygabout 2 hours ago
At a company like Anthropic, which is one of the fastest-growing companies in the world, there is more work than anyone can reasonably deal with
anentropic40 minutes ago
I thought that's what their product was for

/s

lmeyerovabout 2 hours ago
When Anthropic's CPO left Figma's board this week, that was my first question . Oof.
hooverlabs28 minutes ago
I thought polymet did a pretty good job of creating mobile app designs and component libraries when I tested it. Winder how this will compare
bilekasabout 1 hour ago
Google ai studio has been doing this pretty well for mockups for me at least. I do see people running out of their already limited tokens using this though, unless they silo them to another collection of tokens.

Edit: I see they have a new token tier 'Claude Design' so that's good.

_the_inflatorabout 1 hour ago
Lovable was a TailwindCSS recombinator, that’s it.

Lately it is more and more ShadCN as well.

TailwindCSS is a masterpiece but ironically doesn’t really get its fare share while “Build on top of TW” frameworks make money.

TailwindCSS is the final evolution after all other frameworks always had its benefits but also massive limitations.

BEM anyone?

TW is really elegant a new paradigm in its purest sense and brilliantly executed. No wholes could be poked in it for years and the extensibility shows, how brilliant it is.

Bootstrap will always be held dearly but it was about browser quirks etc first. Important milestone but stands no chance against TW.

oaxacaoaxacaabout 1 hour ago
Am I the only one who doesn't like Tailwind? The way it totally pollutes your html makes it seem like, while the benefits are impressive, they're not worth the collateral damage.
Bridged775634 minutes ago
It's pretty much all personal preference. You can do anything with css modules, or use any other CSS extension.

I don't ever recall hearing about the specific, tangible benefits tailwind brings. Just a loose "it's faster", or "it's easier". It just feels like one of those things, in front end development, that are just hype-driven rather than actually bringing any ostensible benefit.

conradkay27 minutes ago
https://htmx.org/essays/locality-of-behaviour/

I'm not a big tailwind fan, but keeping styling in a separate file feels like a net negative

AstroBenabout 1 hour ago
Yeah I'm not a huge fan of it, either. Well organized CSS is much nicer to work with. On the other hand, I'd prefer Tailwind to badly organized CSS.
enraged_camelabout 1 hour ago
You are not the only one. I also dislike it immensely. For a framework that established itself as "for developers who don't know or want to learn CSS", polluting the HTML in the manner you describe makes no sense. And no company I've worked at figured out how to prevent it from becoming a bloated, impossible-to-maintain mess.
sweetheartabout 1 hour ago
I'm in the same boat. Tailwind always seemed insane to me, even after really giving it the benefit of the doubt and trying it out. I use it now only because its so easy for the LLMs to use, so I don't need to actually interface with it at all.
Bridged775631 minutes ago
Btw are you from Oaxaca? Nice to see another Mexican in here.
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taytus6 minutes ago
Anthropic is making the exact same mistake OpenAI did: lack of focus. Release, release, release, all good apps, all full of bugs. This is a massive mess and people aren't talking enough about how bad all of this is.
arbugeabout 1 hour ago
They state the link is claude.ai/design, which currently goes to:

Page not found Claude can help with many things, but finding this page isn’t one of them.

when logged in.

ben8bitabout 1 hour ago
Unless you want something that looks like it's designed by Anthropic, this is still pretty shit. Amazingly "AI" hasn't replaced the very first target on their radar - design.
AstroBenabout 1 hour ago
Design is very hard to verbally describe, and AI doesn't have good judgement on what is easy to use or attractive.
ben8bit42 minutes ago
I think it's because it's non-deterministic too. You can't iteratively improve design the same way you can code.
conradkay29 minutes ago
If they wanted couldn't they do something like RLHF? Instead of humans picking the best of 2 text outputs, they pick the best rendered design
m_w_about 2 hours ago
Really interesting response to Google's Stitch - and seemingly a better alternative given some of the features shown in the video. If everything actually works at least close to how it's advertised, this'll be useful. I'm sure it's no Dieter Rams, but it wouldn't be a surprise if it's already better than many devs at design work.
maerF0x0about 2 hours ago
> voice, video, shaders, 3D and built-in AI.

As someone who's thinking about side project-ing a game, this caught my eye.

I am curious to explore what Claude can yolo in terms of a retro style indie game... One who's audience might only be me.

jmkniabout 3 hours ago
Unfortunate that linking code from your computer doesn't work with Firefox

Very interesting though

whywhywhywhy37 minutes ago
ultimately if it’s so close to the finished product you may as well just do it in cursor rather than have an extra step.

The design problem to solve post-ai isn’t this it’s how the space for thinking fits into all this, getting to the end result slower so human ideation can play out. This is just optimized for the first generic output + tweaks.

semking22 minutes ago
Sorry, I hit my session limit by just reading the title
reluctant_devabout 2 hours ago
Maybe I am using it wrong but it feels much closer to Lovable than Figma. I was expecting this to feel like the two products combined. Certainly better than Lovable though, but a little disappointing.
atonseabout 3 hours ago
I've been spending the last two days building a large number of mockups for a new product. Literally the last two days.

I'm wondering how i can CONTINUE that in this design thing, can i import something? Because they show it the other way... you can start and edit, and then export to claude code.

Until then, I guess it's back to just using CC

coder543about 3 hours ago
From the page:

> Import from anywhere. Start from a text prompt, upload images and documents (DOCX, PPTX, XLSX), or point Claude at your codebase. You can also use the web capture tool to grab elements directly from your website so prototypes look like the real product.

atonseabout 2 hours ago
Thank you, I should RTFA next time.
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khalic34 minutes ago
Had some fun with the wireframe mode, very useful to sketch some interaction concepts
aanetabout 2 hours ago
So.. this is why Anthropic CPO left the board of Figma
max_streeseabout 1 hour ago
One thing I am wondering: How much logic (in the programming sense) is there in this product and how much of it is „just“ a lean wrapper around the LLM?
firefoxdabout 3 hours ago
I've been using stich from Gemini, and just plain zAi for helping redesign my website. You can use the generated code to copy and paste the design to fit your own templates, but that's a pain. Unless you are ok with using tailwind and the dozen or so classes on every element and don't want to edit anything.

What I found valuable is the design.md that was produced. It's a guide for building each component. So using these tools becomes akin to PSD to html we used do. At least that's when I find them most effective.

jej_FundAlign34 minutes ago
I just started using Claude and its amazing. I cant believe ive waited so long. Looking forward to designing
tzuryabout 2 hours ago
Anthropic’s roadmap is widely underappreciated; it is the company defining AI productivity today.
psadriabout 2 hours ago
What’s interesting here is that with AI, all our interfaces should evolve away from previous generation rigid forms / buttons / tables etc. towards something more fluid / dynamic / “natural”. Yet all the AI coding is geared towards producing more of the former.
xpct27 minutes ago
Do you have examples of "natural" UI that you like?
cmrx6440 minutes ago
i think of them as tiers of expertise— need to master the basics of structure and form before the robot has the learned representations to competently model user interactions with more fluid instantiations (by downprojecting into the overlearned fixed-semantics)
jayd16about 2 hours ago
Why would a remix engine move away from what it was trained on?

Why would we want to move away from hard fought UX design lessons? Dynamic and fluid UX is infuriating.

orbital-decay18 minutes ago
Until the large model output variety/mode collapse is solved, tools like this one will be generating monotonous slop. Very few people using it will be specifying each detail of what they want.
PullJoshabout 3 hours ago
I like their emphasis on quickly prototyping many variations of a design. That seems useful, even for experienced designers.
rvzabout 3 hours ago
Useful enough to replace Figma.
htrpabout 2 hours ago
Reminder that Claude's own AI design skill (which is probably incorporated directly into this product) says things like

>NEVER use generic AI-generated aesthetics like overused font families (Inter, Roboto, Arial, system fonts), cliched color schemes (particularly purple gradients on white backgrounds), predictable layouts and component patterns, and cookie-cutter design that lacks context-specific character.

> Interpret creatively and make unexpected choices that feel genuinely designed for the context. No design should be the same. Vary between light and dark themes, different fonts, different aesthetics. NEVER converge on common choices (Space Grotesk, for example) across generations.

[1] https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/blob/main/plugins/...

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giancarlostoroabout 2 hours ago
We used to have RAD based IDE's and now I guess with AI we're going full circle, I'm curious how their mobile thing works, if its just React Native based or what.
causalabout 2 hours ago
Will give it a try but my experience with Claude and browser use so far is that it’s extremely lazy: it rarely notices or cares when something doesn’t look right, it needs lots of pointing out “hey you ignored that broken render” etc
young_meteabout 2 hours ago
Will be taking this for a spin imminently. What seems to be very unique here vs other canvas tools are the generative UI controls.

If you’re confused about why everyone is shipping their own canvas tool - this is what I wrote when I reviewed Stitch from Google in my newsletter:

“every SOTA (State-of-the-Art) model can already do this. Give it a prompt, it'll spit out an HTML design. Ask for 10 responsive variations, you'll get them. Stitch is a Ul and context harness on top of Gemini, in the same way Claude Code is a harness on top of Claude's models. This means every Al lab will likely ship their own version, and they'll all interoperate because at the end of the day it's all HTML and markdown.”

More generally, this is a competition of where the product development work starts and lives. The business value will accrue to those who become a destination, not a plugin.

AI can now power a new sort of tool that supports the entire process (not just coding or just design). So there’s no reason for Anthropic or any other lab to give that up to another tool.

hmokiguessabout 3 hours ago
Who’s the end user for this? I struggle to relate but then again I also don’t use Figma so I may not be the target demographic

I have been doing fine just instructing Claude code to use Tailwind and reference design documents

recitedropperabout 3 hours ago
Seems to me like Anthropic is desperately trying to find as many product-market fits as possible before they IPO. They're reaching a chaotic weekly release cadence--each new product chockful of unclear, overlapping capability with their previous.

Combine that with the obvious hackernews manipulation that somehow gets each and every haphazard release instantly to the top, and you can see they're starting to feel some real heat.

3sdfs11 minutes ago
Correct they're trying to bamboozle the stock market.

Im looking at this product and thinking - so...? Where's the vision?

Oh there is none. Its about spraying and praying that the hype continues and feeding off analysts who don't really understand most of the firms that they spend all day studying the valuation of.

johnfnabout 2 hours ago
It’s interesting to claim that because everything they do goes to the top on hacker news that they must be in trouble. I haven’t heard that particular chain of effect before.
recitedropperabout 2 hours ago
Feeling some heat != in trouble. Just that the pressure cooker is turning to a higher temp.

But, I'll gladly admit that I am bias: I'm tired of seeing blatant astroturfing by a company whose main marketing tactic is to play on societal fear, while simultaneously employing safety theatre to look like the "good guys".

So take my opinion with a grain of salt :)

dbbkabout 3 hours ago
"Who's the end user for this?" obviously people who use figma
anonfunctionabout 3 hours ago
Start designing at claude.ai/design.

That link is redirecting me to https://claude.ai/404, anyone else?

ramathornnabout 3 hours ago
It's funny seeing the Co-founder of Canva commending the product. Yikes!

This app is pretty slick, this will funnel a huge number of customers away from Figma + Canva imo.

maerF0x0about 2 hours ago
you missed that there's an export to canva button. It will funnel users _to_ Canva.
ramathornnabout 2 hours ago
Why would they need to back to Canva? If teams are working within claude already I think they will just offboard canva/figma tasks into claude.
ativzzz7 minutes ago
Non designers will vibe-design a prototype with claude, export it to canva and let the designers finish it up

If code doesn't go this direction soon, I'd be surprised. PM builds a prototype with claude, or designer designs something in figma/canva - claude vibe codes 70% of the solution using your company's frameworks and design system, then hands it off to the developer who finishes it and productionizes it

bryabaekabout 2 hours ago
such a cheerful background music to celebrate the death of lovable, bolt.new, figma LOL
designwithjawadabout 1 hour ago
Design industry is shaking right now.
teaearlgraycold30 minutes ago
Just started messing around with this but I like it. It produces better results than just using Claude Code on its own. The initial output has a lot of junk that needs to be removed (just like anything LLMs generate). I suspect it's only good at reproducing content that is relatively cookie-cutter and prominent in the training data. But still, as a non-designer this produces better results than I can and in line with the level of quality of many paid templates.
K0INabout 2 hours ago
this might be a game changer (for show dont tell), and fast itterations in design meetings, to show what your thinking of.
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xnxabout 2 hours ago
The faster we commodify design the faster we can get back to some sane consistent normal interfaces. Only the very biggest platforms (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Apple) should be spending any time on "design systems".

Imagine if a designer were hired to custom design the lightswitches in every building. We need to get back to off-the-shelf interfaces and stop wasting smart people's time reinventing UI widgets.

cbm-vic-20about 1 hour ago
Designers are hired to make sure those light switches are put in the right place. Much of the time, it's pretty obvious. But sometimes...
gneggghabout 2 hours ago
no info regarding privacy and data if you connect your repo?
wg0about 2 hours ago
How dangerous is this eh?
i_love_retrosabout 1 hour ago
I think we will have maybe 5 to 10 years of all this crap, devaluing human made art and human made products, vibe coding everything. But eventually it will all fall apart. Long term only a minority will be happy seeing AI generated crap everywhere and most people will pay for quality human made goods.

Unfortunately it's going to be a tough few years until that happens, where it really does feel like the idiots are winning.

THE IDIOTS ARE WINNING

devmorabout 2 hours ago
This stuff is the antithesis of what I want to see AI used for.

Deriving a bland average of creativity is the saddest thing you could do. I don’t even enjoy design and I find this offensive.

jonluccabout 2 hours ago
Claude, add a bit of whimsy to this design.
firasdabout 2 hours ago
This seems a bit fiddly... I gave it the ChatGPT iframe html for my (not yet released) Liveclip MCP server that's like tables [https://x.com/firasd/status/2039926453408776649]. And I had this chat in the sidebar and it popped up some questions in a form

> do you see our current html

Hi-fi design Interactive prototype html

> do you see our current html

Hi-fi design Interactive prototype html

● Claude Yes — I can see your html/ folder. It has 7 files:

files-list.html math-result.html rows-view.html table-view.html text-editor-doc-view.html trending-topics.html unique-result.html Want me to open them up and take a look at what's in there? And what would you like to do — polish them, turn them into an interactive prototype, build something new on top, or something else?

> yeah in table view i'm thinking about how to deal with cells that may be big. i guess we want to do something different than excel or sheets in that auto expand rows with cells that contain big values. we can show like the first -- what does twitter show, 280? so we can show 280 chars and then [...]

● Let me take a look at the current table view to understand what we're working with.

Got it — I see the current table view. Right now every cell is clamped to max-width:220px with white-space:nowrap and text-overflow:ellipsis, so long values just get cut off at whatever ~30 chars fits the column. You're thinking about the opposite end: what if a cell genuinely holds 2,000 chars of text? Neither pure clip nor Excel-style row expansion is quite right.

Before I start sketching, a few quick questions so I don't guess wrong:

> Questions answered: - truncation_threshold: ~280 chars (new tweet) - expansion_ux: nothing right now -- it's not interactive - row_height_policy: Grow freely like Notion/Airtable - content_types: Not sure yet - indicator_style: [...] at the end of the text - newlines: Render them (row grows) - copy_affordance: no interaction right now - column_width: Fixed width, all columns equal - variation_count: 2 variations - aesthetic_direction: Same bones, but let you push it a bit

● Got it — so: non-interactive, rows can grow freely, 280-char cap with [...], newlines render, same bones but push it a bit, 2 variations. Let me sketch this out.

Set up variations file with two table treatments V1: Notion/Airtable-style free-grow with [...] cap V2: pushed aesthetic variant Wire both to the same sample data w/ long cells Let me peek at a couple of the sibling files so the variations stay in-family with the rest of the widget set.

Good — now I have the visual family. The shared vocabulary across widgets:

#f5f5f3 page, #fff card, #d0d0cc borders, #f0f0ec headers System font, 12–14px Subtle alternating row tints, no drop shadows, flat corners Color used sparingly; #666 for secondary text My plan for the two variations (side-by-side in a canvas so you can compare on the same rows):

V1 — "Notion-ish, stay in family"

Keep current palette, borders, zebra striping Rows grow vertically as needed; white-space: pre-wrap so newlines render Cap each cell at 280 chars; if longer, slice to 280 + […] inline Same fixed column widths, everything else identical V2 — "Same bones, pushed"

Tightens the grid (hairline borders instead of panels, more whitespace, denser typography) Column rail with sticky row numbers Soft fade on the bottom of ultra-tall cells instead of mid-text […] when content is really long (hybrid: char cap + visual) Monospaced tabular digits for row numbers; type column ⌾ / ▤ markers subtly hinting content type; column width slightly wider for breathing room Let me build it.

Now let me build the two variations. I'll set up realistic sample data with a mix of short values, tweet-length values, long-long values, and ones with newlines, so the behaviors are visible.

Now the two table components.

Clean. Two variations on the canvas, both rendering the same 7 rows so you can compare directly:

V1 — in-family. Your current widget, with white-space: pre-wrap so rows grow, newlines render, and a soft grey […] appended when a cell goes past 280 chars. Row 3's summary (double-long prose) and row 4's URL show the cap. V2 — same bones, pushed. Hairline borders instead of filled header panels, monospaced tabular row gutter, column letters as uppercased small-caps above the header names row, tighter typographic rhythm, cells > 280 → […] legend in the footer. Row 7 shows how newlines render naturally. Both slice at the nearest word boundary when one is within ~40 chars of the 280 cap, otherwise hard-cut — so […] never lands mid-word.

A couple of things worth calling out, not changed:

280 is pretty generous when a row has multiple long cells side-by-side — row 3 is ~2 cells × 280 = a very tall row. If that ends up being painful in real usage, dropping to ~180 or adding a per-row max-height with fade might be worth a follow-up. Neither variation is interactive per your answer; there's no click-to-expand, hover, or copy. Easy to bolt on later. Fork verifier agent Both variations are live on the canvas. Let me know which direction feels right and I'll fold it back into html/table-view.html." -----

It's basically similar to their Artifacts system in a harness I guess

RickSabout 2 hours ago
lmao at the idea of figma integrations, categorically. I don't ever want to look at figma again in my life. figma is what people used to ideate quickly because they couldn't build directly in the browser. we can now ideate quickly while working directly in the browser. figma's entire raison d'etre is dinosaur tier over.

With that said, this seems like it's just claude code + simplified devtools in a container? Will need to spend more time with it to see how EG commenting influences things, but 5 minutes in, this seems like it's needless formalization on top of how I already used claude for deisgn

albert_eabout 3 hours ago
is this the Figma/Canva/Powerpoint/Keynote killer?
alpbabout 3 hours ago
This largely appears to be a HTML generator at its core, not necessarily what Figma does with layers/canvases etc. There's no collaborative nature to it either.

It feels like a lightly designed product that moves claude CLI to their backend, generates the HTMLs and renders them in browser on claude.ai website for you. Sure, it accepts your design system as an input from you or imports from your repo, but you could feed the same into claude CLI as well?

I'm curious what exactly it gives besides having claude CLI + prompting it well with your design system + skills.

weatherfunabout 2 hours ago
The IBM/Microsoft analogy is a classic. It’s always fascinating to watch these 'frenemy' dynamics play out. In these cases, the one who owns the direct interface with the end-user usually wins the long game, while the 'infrastructure' partner risks becoming just another utility. Will be interesting to see if Canva can maintain its identity or just become a shell for Claude's output.
diatoneabout 2 hours ago
Yep agree it looks like it’s taking the existing generated artefact, parameterising it within an inch of its life, exposing a pseudo WYSIWYG for the parameters and calling it a day with a few export options. Not a huge leap from what they’ve got already but it’s a clever adjacent step for sure. Same product new chrome.
Boss0565about 3 hours ago
Considering Canva collaborated with them, no?
Sol-about 3 hours ago
Maybe a collaboration with a metaphorical gun to your head.
frankdenbowabout 3 hours ago
Canva has more expansive editing tools but I agree, it seems like a frenemies situation.
svntabout 3 hours ago
Or one from a place of unfounded hubris.
netdevphoenixabout 3 hours ago
IBM also collaborated with Microsoft for the OS and we know how that ended.
strickjb9about 3 hours ago
First NanoBanana came for the artists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not an artist.

Then Claude came for the designers with Claude Design, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a designer.

...

coffeebeqnabout 1 hour ago
Claude code also came for us. Is anything sacred? Middle management?
yard2010about 3 hours ago
MagicMoonlightabout 2 hours ago
Interestingly, Claude Design has its own completely separate usage bar.
sidrag22about 1 hour ago
that usage page is getting really cluttered, really fast. Two months ago, mine was simply a 5 hour usage window, and the extra usage portion.

Now its 5 Hour usage, Weekly Usage, Claude Design, Daily Routine Runs, and the Extra Usage portion...

jansanabout 3 hours ago
Well, after having high expectations from watching the intro the actual result of a simple prompt "Bear on a bicycle" is very underwhelming.

Maybe AI is not good at everything, yet.

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sudohalt35 minutes ago
Lol I've vibe coded something identical to this in a day.
LetsGetTechniclabout 2 hours ago
Oh great more slop
digitalShieldabout 2 hours ago
I use claude daily
lmf4lolabout 1 hour ago
the tech is really cool. its amazing. but i freaking hate this future
quotemstrabout 2 hours ago
Postmodernists are annoying because they are right about design. "Taste", aesthetics, design, vibes they're all as socially-constructed and post-truth as that annoying sophomore says everything is. The world is design is an isekai manga in which Derrida's delusions are the rules of physics. It's weird.

Part of this weirdness is the continual relativism of design. A taste-meme is good or cringe only relative to the prevailing social environment, never itself. An AI can never do "design", properly understood, because design is the work done by a reluctance motor, spinning endlessly in a Sysphean quest to align itself with a moving magnetic field and producing torque by side effect.

All efforts like this can do is capture the field alignment at an instant in time. It cannot do work. It cannot produce motion, not as long as its weights are as fixed as the field lines of a neodymium magnet. The instant AI design is good, it becomes bad through the act of becoming good.

Producing work through motion of taste may be one of the last human endeavors to be absorbed.

xpct21 minutes ago
I agree with what you're saying, but I imagine products like this one aren't aimed at replacing this. LLMs are partially a dashboard business, and this is just one tool to aim at your boring business data
cdrnsfabout 3 hours ago
Now I can visualize my bloated shadcn + Tailwind UI in advance.
pembrookabout 1 hour ago
I disagree with most of the takes here. The reason this will fail has nothing to do with design, designers, or taste.

This will fail because it's already a forgotten side project within anthropic, and anthropic also has pretty bad product DNA as a company. Their headcount is already too large and the culture is already set. They grew revenue so fast they speedran the stage at which you could build software product chops into the company culture (think Google circa 2008 vs. Google circa 2018).

They should focus on what they're good at: the actual AI models and B2B sales. Let OpenAI play early Google and churn through 100 different consumer product experiences to see what sticks, they're better positioned for it anyways.

3sdfs8 minutes ago
" the actual AI models and B2B sales."

Maybe they realised its actually a dead-end? Why else would you not double-down and concentrate resources? This would be an amateur error if it turned out to be true.

lagrange77about 3 hours ago
And another step toward a world, where product managers/owners/whatever and other boring people can generate what they once needed creative, passionate and skilled people for. Go ahead, its just the natural evolution of extreme capitalism.
mikeaskew4about 3 hours ago
Thumbs down. Great design is original thought. AI is wholly incapable of that.

Go ahead and roast me.

freedombenabout 3 hours ago
> Great design is original thought

I don't agree. For novel use cases, yes there's some truth to that. But consistency is huge in a UX. If basic controls work well for a situation, they should be used. Designers should not be getting "creative" or "original" for those sorts of things.

criddellabout 1 hour ago
I don't think you are really disagreeing. I'd guess mikeaskew4 would include the constraints of following platform conventions / HIGs and using native widgets for any GUI. Those constraints do not preclude original thought.
jonluccabout 3 hours ago
Transparently, I'm not a designer, I'm a biologist. That said, the things I want designed by Claude don't need great design. I need a slide format that is consistent from one study to the next so the reader can follow. I need a tool that tracks the number of mice in each lab and flags if someone is using more resources than we expect. I need a personal site that is easy to work with that tracks my pet geckos' feed and environment.

If I have a product out of my lab that makes it to human trials, there will be a full team of marketers and designers tasked to the brand image.

nothinkjustaiabout 1 hour ago
I doubt you’d be singing the same tune if Anthropic released Claude Researcher and a bunch of people were saying “I’m a designer, not a biologist. I don’t need great research. I just need X”

Ironically I think AI will replace researchers before it replaces artists.

jonluccabout 1 hour ago
I'm not the one saying my job is uniquely human. Last week, I watched a video of a vendor's new facility that entirely automates antibody production and screening lab. The machines run literally every step from picking antibodies, sequencing, scaling up, and in vitro screening without a human interfering or donning a labcoat. A machine that is essentially a nicer roomba fetches the flask and drives it to where the shakers are and puts it on an empty shaker spot. I have no doubt the lab tasks I do can be automated. Fortunately for me, a large portion of my job at the moment is in handling animals, and there are much higher barriers there, but again, I don't think that part of my job makes me irreplaceable.
eloisantabout 2 hours ago
Having furniture made by a master designer and artisan woodworker is great. But sometimes, you don't have the budget for that and Ikea furnitures does the job just fine. Most of the time, actually.
nothinkjustaiabout 1 hour ago
IKEA hires many great designers for its furniture though.
dumfriesabout 3 hours ago
As if original thought occurs out of thin air. AI is definitely capable to take aspects of design and apply it elsewhere.
criddellabout 3 hours ago
Maybe you haven't noticed, but most of the internet doesn't seem to care about great design.

Also, a lot of very good software developers are bad at design and unwilling or unable to pay for a designer. This will be an improvement for them.

coffeebeqnabout 1 hour ago
That’s pretty true. Just look at this sites design
rgloverabout 2 hours ago
You're absolutely correct.

But the mass market (who this is ultimately for) doesn't care about great design. They care about "seeing something on the screen." If they can get something that looks 80-90% aligned with what they observe to be modern design, they won't think twice (even if the end result is clunky or not on par with what a professional designer would produce). It's the Ikea Effect on steroids.

johnfnabout 2 hours ago
Tell this to the 99% of designers who are designing the 5th page in some RBAC modal or some obscure settings page. Design is like code - there are a few people doing really groundbreaking stuff, but vastly more doing the utilitarian plumbing everyone depends on.
garrickvanburenabout 3 hours ago
My default position: If an LLM can create it, we probably don't actually need it.
t0loabout 3 hours ago
If AI can create it- it's probably already been created and thought of before?
cruffle_duffleabout 1 hour ago
You can let the LLM create slop for you, sure. But only amateurs are using it for that. You’ll be much happier if you treat it as a tool and use it like any other, a force multiplier to take your ideas and creations and pushes them further along faster.

If you treat it like a black box used to outsource your own thinking, you are holding it wrong.

nothinkjustaiabout 1 hour ago
It’s honestly been my experience. I think I’ve vibe coded one thing that I’ve found to be genuinely useful to me, everything else has ended up as useless slop given time.

I think we probably need less software, but higher quality, not more. Unfortunately AI only goes in one direction…

seydorabout 2 hours ago
Have you seen many original designs in the past 15 years?
cortesoftabout 2 hours ago
Sure, great design is original thought.

Is there also a place in the world for not-great-but-good-enough design?

chasd00about 2 hours ago
> Great design is original thought

not really, great design in a web application is no surprises.

wolttamabout 2 hours ago
Human inputs their idea. AI helps bring it to light faster. Human iterates.

Still human?

Jtariiabout 2 hours ago
Great designers will make great designs no matter what tools you give them.
rbtprogramsabout 3 hours ago
i dont disagree. but there is a difference between great design and entirely acceptable and shippable design.
mupuff1234about 3 hours ago
Most applications just need good enough design.
subhobrotoabout 2 hours ago
> Great design is original thought. AI is wholly incapable of that

This is entirely accurate, however I fear there's a lack of perspective:

If you're in the middle of the desert and need to sit down, that random rock looks and feels great because there's nothing even close, around!

One issue that a lot of experts fail to recognize is that "great" is relative: It's not apparent to the experts because they are only pulled in when their expertise is needed. Most of the time when experts are pulled in, requirements are clear, you have traction, scale and now you need to optimize.

Once you're spoiled for choices, you have lots of options and then that random rock doesn't look appealing at all: now you're considering other factors like budget - IKEA vs Adirondack.

What AI is making a huge difference are places where "great" isnt that valuable:

- people in the desert: Someone wants to track what words their toddler is saying or their groceries or how much kitty litter they should buy soon and Claude will spit something out reasonable even if it makes the skin of experts crawl.

- commodity and bean counters: in cut throat industries like power or insurance, it's all commodity services competing on price. Most people arent going to pay a premium for a better looking, more intuitive insurance app. It just needs to not suck and fall over. Or you're making a knockoff of an existing, well understood product

esafakabout 2 hours ago
This is just going to chop the bottom end off, same as with software. If you are great you get to keep your job.

The catch is that the person making the decision might not know or care about the difference.