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Open Design

Open Design

Local-first desktop app that turns your coding agent into a design engine

Tier S · Best in classAI ToolAppTemplateopen-design.ai

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Preview image from open-design.ai

Open Design is an Apache-2.0 desktop workspace that drives an already-installed coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and 20-odd others) to produce real design files instead of chat text: interactive prototypes, landing pages, dashboards, slide decks, images, and HTML-to-MP4 motion graphics called HyperFrames. Brand consistency is carried by a plain-text DESIGN.md contract plus 151 packaged design systems, so the same visual language survives across agents and artifacts. The plugin library holds 468+ entries split into Templates, Skills and Systems, including 143 example render templates and 11 video templates. It is for designers and builders who want agent-generated artifacts as owned local files (HTML/PDF/PPTX/MP4) with BYOK model costs rather than a closed cloud tool.

Install
curl -fsSL https://open-design.ai/install.sh | sh -s <agent>

For an agent

Reach for this when the deliverable is a finished artifact — a deck, a dashboard, a landing page, an MP4 — rather than a component you will import into an app; it writes real HTML/PDF/PPTX/MP4 to disk instead of returning markup in chat. Pull one plugin from /plugins as the starting frame and let DESIGN.md carry the brand, because a bare prompt with no design system is where the generic-AI look creeps back in. Watch out that it drives whichever agent CLI is already installed and bills through your own key, so long deck and video runs cost real tokens; also treat the 143 example templates as remix seeds, not as an importable component library.

Why it is here. It is the most complete open answer to closed AI design tools — a portable DESIGN.md contract plus 468 plugins that make agent output look art-directed rather than auto-generated.

Install command, framework, licence and component list.

Facts

License
Apache 2.0
Pricing
Free, Open source
Framework
Vanilla JS, Not applicable
Styling
Vanilla CSS, CSS custom properties
Distribution
Desktop application, Direct download / asset pack, GitHub repository, CLI installer, Agent skill / rules pack, MCP server
Platform
macOS, Windows, Linux, Desktop, Web
Content type
Code, Design tokens / theme files, Prompts, Images / textures / backgrounds, Video, PDF document
Agent readiness
Agent skill or rules pack, MCP server, CLI installable, Readable open source, Structured documentation, Copy-paste ready code
Accessibility
Unknown
Maturity
Actively maintained
Pricing detail
The app is free and Apache-2.0. You pay your own model provider through BYOK (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, Google, Ollama or a custom endpoint).
GitHub stars
86,900

Components it ships

13
DashboardStatChartSidebarCardHeroQuoteHeadingTypographyFigureImageKpi RowPage Header

Helps you build

7
HomepageFeaturesAnalyticsBlog PostPricing WebsiteAboutPress Media

Templates

56 of 143

Notable for

  • DESIGN.md contract portable across 21+ agent CLIs
  • 468+ plugins across Templates, Skills and Systems
  • HyperFrames: HTML to MP4 motion graphics
  • 151 packaged design systems
  • Apache-2.0 and local-first with BYOK

Provenance

Verified 2026-08-15. HTTP 200. https://open-design.ai, https://open-design.ai/plugins, https://github.com/nexu-io/open-design, https://github.com/nexu-io/open-design/tree/main/plugins/_official, https://github.com/nexu-io/open-design/tree/main/plugins/_official/examples (143 directory names read directly). https://open-design.ai/templates returned 404. Template URLs follow the /plugins/example-<dir>/ pattern confirmed on four featured entries.

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open-design.aiTier S