What Is Claude Design? How to Use It, Export It, and What Changed

What is Claude Design? It's Anthropic's tool for making visual work by talking to Claude: app screens, interactive prototypes, landing pages, one-pagers, and slides. You describe what you need, Claude builds a first version on a canvas next to the conversation, and you refine it with chat, inline comments, or direct edits.

If you read about it at launch, a lot has changed. Claude Design started in April 2026 as a separate Anthropic Labs product in research preview for paid plans. Today it's one of the templates you can start an artifact from, it works inside any conversation, and Anthropic lists it on every plan, including Free.

The quick facts, as of October 2026:

Below: how Claude Design works, how to use it step by step, how to export, and what's different from launch.

How Claude Design works

Anthropic's launch post from April 17, 2026 framed the problem well. Designers rarely have time to prototype a dozen directions, and founders, product managers, and marketers with an idea often have no design background at all. Claude Design is meant to serve both.

The core idea is a conversation paired with a canvas. Claude generates a working design, not a flat picture, and you shape it from there. The getting-started guide describes three ways to edit:

Claude can also make custom adjustment sliders for things like spacing and color, which the launch post called out as one of the fine-grained controls.

The design system is what makes it look like your company. A design system captures your colors, typography, components, and layout patterns. Claude can build one from a codebase, a slide deck, brand guidelines, or Figma files, then apply it to every new design. If your components already live in React, the /design-sync command in Claude Code reads your tokens and components directly. Anthropic's design system guide notes that design systems themselves are in beta on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise.

How to use Claude Design, step by step

You can start a design in four places:

• In a conversation. Ask for it ("Mock up the onboarding flow we just discussed"), or select Output > Design in the message box.
• In the Artifacts tab. Pick a Design template.
• In Claude Code. Ask for a design, or use /design to create, edit, and sync designs on desktop or in the terminal.
• On iOS and Android. Ask in any conversation and view the result full screen in the Artifacts tab. Sharing settings need web or desktop.

From there, Anthropic's typical flow is:

1. Start a design from a conversation or the Artifacts tab.
2. Attach the design system you want Claude to build with.
3. Add context: screenshots, existing decks, or a code repository.
4. Describe what you want. Cover the goal, the layout, the content, and the audience.
5. Review what Claude puts on the canvas.
6. Refine through chat, comments, or direct edits.
7. Export or share.

Prompts that work. The help center's own examples are specific about what goes where:

• "Create a dashboard showing monthly revenue with filters for region and product line."
• "Build a landing page for our new API product with a hero section, code examples, and pricing."
• "Design an internal tool for our ops team to review and approve content submissions."

Vague feedback gets vague results. "This doesn't look right" is hard to act on. "Tighten the spacing between form fields to 8px" isn't. If you're unsure about a direction, ask for two or three options and compare them.

To explore without losing work, tell Claude: "Save what we have and try a completely different approach." That matters because, per Anthropic's known limitations, Claude Design doesn't have version history yet.

Can Claude Design create app UI design?

Yes. App interfaces are one of the main things it's built for. One of Anthropic's example prompts is literally "Design a mobile app onboarding flow with 4 screens that walks users through our core features."

What the launch post lists teams using it for:

• Realistic prototypes. Turn static mockups into shareable interactive prototypes to gather feedback and user-test, without code review or PRs.
• Product wireframes and mockups. Sketch feature flows, then hand them to Claude Code or to a designer.
• Design explorations. Generate a wide range of directions quickly.
• Code-powered prototypes with voice, video, shaders, 3D, and built-in AI, which Anthropic calls frontier design.

Two habits make app UI come out better. Say which screen sizes matter early: mobile, tablet, desktop, or just one. And name components from your design system ("Use the Primary Button component") so Claude uses your real pieces instead of inventing new ones.

From design to working app. When a design is ready to become software, you hand it off to Claude Code, which continues from your existing work instead of starting over from a screenshot. Claude Design can also send work to app builders like Lovable, Replit, v0, and Vercel. If you're weighing other AI design-to-code routes, our Google Stitch and Claude Code guide covers a different path.

One honest limit: multi-person editing on the same design at the same time is still basic, and Anthropic says it may not work reliably.

How to download a Claude Design artifact

Open your design and click Export in the upper right. The current options:

Compare that with launch, when the export list was Canva, PDF, PPTX, standalone HTML, or saving as a folder. Google Slides and the longer list of destinations came later.

Sharing is separate from downloading. Designs start private to you. Click Share to choose who can open a design and whether they can view, comment, or edit.

Still on the standalone site? Each project can be downloaded there too. Open the project at claude.ai/design, click Share, choose Project HTML (for a slide deck, it's under "More formats and apps"), keep Project archive selected, and click Export. You get a .zip of every file in the project, and Anthropic says it doesn't count toward your usage limits. Chats and comments aren't included.

What changed since the research preview

Here's launch against today, using Anthropic's own pages:

The turning point was September 16, 2026, when Anthropic announced that Cowork and chat are merging into one Claude and that Claude Design now works inside your conversations. That post described Design, Docs, and Slides as in beta on paid plans. Anthropic's Claude Design product page now says Design, Slides, and Docs are included in every plan, including Free. Our Claude Cowork guide covers the wider merge.

Enterprise works a little differently. There, Claude Design turned on by default on October 15, 2026, and owners could turn it on earlier in Organization settings > Artifacts.

The standalone site is closing. Per Anthropic's move guide, claude.ai/design closes on December 14, 2026 and becomes read-only after that. What to do before then:

• Move your design systems now. Open the Artifacts page in Claude and click "Move team design systems" in the banner.
• Move the projects you want to keep. Moving projects is rolling out gradually to paid plans. A moved project becomes an artifact, and the standalone copy turns read-only.
• Save your chats and comments. They don't move to Claude and are deleted some time after the standalone site closes.

Usage is shared now. Claude Design used to have its own weekly allowance. All design activity now draws from the same pool as the rest of your Claude work, including Claude Code, and big projects with large codebases or many iterations use more. For plan details, check Anthropic's pricing page rather than any third-party number.

Where Taku fits

Claude Design is good at turning an idea into a visual you can show people. The step people often get stuck on comes after: running a working AI setup, like a tool, skill, or workflow someone else has already built and shared.

That's where Taku comes in. It's an AI-native desktop workspace where you mirror an AI setup someone already got working, run it, and remix it for your own work. Taku is in Beta, and the Mac app is available now.

FAQ

What is Claude Design?

Claude Design is Anthropic's tool for creating designs, prototypes, slides, one-pagers, and other visual work by chatting with Claude. It pairs a conversation with a canvas, applies your design system, and is now one of the templates you can start an artifact from in any Claude conversation.

How do I use Claude Design?

Ask for a design in any conversation, select Output > Design in the message box, or pick a Design template in the Artifacts tab. Add context like screenshots or a codebase, describe the goal, layout, content, and audience, then refine through chat, inline comments, or direct canvas edits.

Can Claude Design create app UI design?

Yes. It can create mobile app flows, dashboards, internal tools, and interactive prototypes, and it can hand a finished design to Claude Code to build. Naming your design system's components and target screen sizes in the prompt gives better results.

How do I download a Claude Design artifact?

Click Export in the upper right of the design. You can download a .zip, export a PDF, PPTX, or standalone HTML file, send it to Google Slides, or send it to tools like Canva, Lovable, or Vercel. On the standalone site, use Share > Project HTML > Project archive > Export.

Is Claude Design still a research preview?

It launched as a research preview on April 17, 2026. Anthropic's current product page and help center describe it as a template included in every plan, including Free. Design systems are listed as in beta on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise.

Is Claude Design free?

Anthropic's product page says Claude Design is included in every plan, including the Free plan, and it counts toward your plan's usage limits. Check Anthropic's pricing page for current plan details.