Repo Year in Review

nexu-io/open-design

Open-source, local-first design agent workspace that turns your coding agent into a design engine for prototypes, decks, images and video, with HTML/PDF/PPTX/MP4 export.

  • 100k GitHub stars
  • TypeScript
  • ⚖️ Apache-2.0
View on GitHub (opens in a new tab) Setup guide
curl -fsSL https://open-design.ai/install.sh | sh -s <agent>
nexu-io/open-design preview image

What it is

OpenDesign is a collaborative design agent workspace licensed under Apache 2.0 and positioned as an open-source Claude Design alternative. You start with a brief, and your coding agent (or OpenDesign Cloud) builds a prototype that follows your design system. It ships skills, design templates, design systems and plugins, and it connects to coding agents via skills/CLI/MCP or native runtime adapters such as DeepSeek Harness.

Who it's for

  • Developers who already use a coding agent CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, DeepSeek Harness, etc.) and want it to produce design artifacts
  • Teams that want an inspectable, self-hostable alternative to Claude Design
  • Designers and teams who want brand-consistent output driven by a DESIGN.md and design systems
  • Users who want to bring their own API key via the BYOK proxy rather than install a CLI

Requirements

Requirements

  • macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel) or Windows (x64) for the prebuilt desktop app; Linux currently requires running from source
  • A coding-agent CLI on your PATH, or a BYOK API key (baseUrl + apiKey + model) for the proxy
  • For DeepSeek Harness: the official dsh CLI installed first
  • Claude Desktop automatic MCP configuration works on macOS and Windows only

Setup

  1. Download the desktop app

    Recommended zero-config route: no Node, no pnpm, no clone. Download for macOS or Windows from open-design.ai or GitHub Releases. The app auto-detects coding-agent CLIs on your PATH. No prebuilt Linux artifact is published; run from source instead.

  2. Install into your coding agent (no UI)

    Use OpenDesign as a skill/plugin/MCP server inside your agent. Replace <agent> with one of: claude, codex, reasonix, raven, cursor, copilot, openclaw, antigravity, pi, vibe, hermes, cline, kimi, kiro, trae, opencode.

    bash
    od mcp install <agent>

  3. Hosted curl-based install

    Equivalent hosted wrapper around od mcp install.

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

  4. Set up DeepSeek Harness

    Install the official dsh CLI first, then select it in OpenDesign or run this command to install/repair OD's connection component.

    bash
    od agent setup deepseek-harness

Examples

Install MCP into Claude Code

bash
bash
od mcp install claude

What it does: Quick setup command from the compatibility table for Claude Code.

Preview an MCP install without changing anything

bash
bash
od mcp install <agent> --print

What it does: Dry-run preview; --uninstall removes the integration and od mcp install --help lists all agents.

Connect DeepSeek Harness as native runtime

bash
bash
od agent setup deepseek-harness

What it does: Installs or repairs OD's connection component for the dsh agent harness.

Pros & cons

Pros

  • Pro:Model- and agent-agnostic: works with 20+ coding-agent CLIs and offers a BYOK proxy with presets for several providers
  • Pro:Real deliverables: decks export to HTML, PDF, PPTX, ZIP or Markdown, and HyperFrames renders HTML to MP4
  • Pro:Open-source (Apache 2.0) with shipped design systems, skills, templates and plugins that can be inspected and adapted
  • Pro:Local-first desktop apps for macOS and Windows, with SSRF protection on the BYOK proxy

Cons

  • Con:No prebuilt Linux desktop release; Linux users must run from source
  • Con:On macOS the bare od command may resolve to Apple's /usr/bin/od, requiring the Settings → MCP server snippet instead
  • Con:Product analytics and session replay are consent-gated, but scrubbed safety and reliability telemetry is always on

Images

nexu-io/open-design preview image
nexu-io/open-design preview image · nexu-io/open-design on GitHub · Apache-2.0
nexu-io/open-design preview image