Claude Design is an Anthropic Labs product, released on 17 April 2026, that lets you describe visual work in plain language and get a first version back: a landing page, an interactive prototype, a slide deck, a one-pager, a set of campaign visuals. You then refine it by editing directly, leaving comments, or adjusting spacing, colour and layout controls. It runs in the browser at claude.com/product/design and is included with Claude Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise subscriptions.
For a business owner it matters because the slowest part of a website change was never the build. It was agreeing what the thing should look like. A tool that turns a conversation into a picture in minutes, and then into a bundle a developer can build from, shortens that loop from weeks to an afternoon.
This guide explains what the tool does and does not do, then walks through five steps for using it on your own website: start from what you have, capture your brand, refine, share, and hand off to code. When you finish, you should be able to produce a reviewable mockup of a new page for your site without opening a design program.
What Claude Design is, and what it is not
Anthropic describes it as a tool for people without a design background, founders and product managers, who need to get from an idea to something visual quickly. It is powered by Claude Opus 4.7. It is a research preview, so features move and limits apply: it uses your subscription's usage allowance, and enterprise administrators have to switch it on.
It is not a replacement for a design team's tools. Anthropic positions it as a complement to Canva rather than a rival, and it exports to Canva for that reason. Think of it as the fastest way to get a first draft that everyone can react to, not the place where a brand's final artwork gets finished.
- Produces: landing pages, wireframes and mockups, interactive prototypes, pitch decks, one-pagers, social and campaign visuals.
- Takes in: a text prompt, uploaded documents (DOCX, PPTX, XLSX), images, a capture of an existing web page, or your codebase.
- Exports: a shareable link, PDF, PPTX, Canva, or standalone HTML.
1. Start from what you already have
A blank prompt gives a generic result. Give the tool your material first: your current website, your service list, your price sheet, last year's brochure. Claude Design accepts documents and images, and has a web capture tool that grabs elements from a live page. If your site is a codebase you own, point it at that; it reads the real components and styles rather than guessing.
Then write the brief the way you would brief a person: who the page is for, what they should do on it, what must be on it, what must not. One paragraph is enough. The specificity is what separates a mockup you can use from one you have to redo.
2. Capture your brand as a design system
Claude Design can build a design system for your team by reading your codebase and design files: colours, typography and components. Every project after that uses them automatically, and a team can keep more than one system. Do this once, before the second mockup, so every page it produces looks like it belongs to your business.
If you have no design files, the fallback is a short written description: two or three colours with their codes, the fonts, the tone. It is less precise than reading from a codebase, which is one more argument for owning a site whose styles live in code you control.
3. Refine in the tool, not in a new prompt
The first draft is a starting point. Change it directly: click the text and retype it, leave an inline comment on the element that is wrong, or use the adjustment controls for spacing, colour and layout. Small corrections made in place keep everything else stable. Re-prompting from scratch for a small change throws away the parts that were right.
Ask for two or three genuinely different directions early, at low fidelity, and pick one before polishing. Five variations of the same layout is not a choice. A warm editorial page beside a dense data-first page is.
4. Share it with the people who decide
Share as a link with view or edit access, or export to PDF, PPTX or Canva. For a website mockup the link is the right choice: it stays current as you refine, and people can comment on the thing itself rather than a screenshot in an email chain. Use the deck exports when the audience is a board or a lender rather than a web reviewer.
5. Hand it to code
When the mockup is agreed, Claude Design packages it into a handoff bundle for Claude Code, Anthropic's coding agent. A developer, or the agent itself, builds the real page from the bundle, in your codebase, using your real components. This is the step that only works on a site you own. A page builder cannot receive a handoff bundle; a full stack site you control can.
Keep the mockup after launch. It becomes the reference for the next change, and the design system it captured means the next mockup starts from your brand rather than from nothing.
How we used it for this blog
The blog you are reading was mocked up before a line of it was built. We gave the tool our codebase so it picked up the fonts, the cream and tan palette and the kicker style the rest of the site uses. We drafted three artboards: the blog index, the article template at desktop width, and the same article at phone width. We reviewed them, changed the author treatment, and then built the pages in code from the agreed layout.
The whole design step took under an hour. The build took longer, but nothing in it was a surprise, because the layout, the copy structure and the mobile behaviour had already been agreed on a picture.
Key takeaways
- 01
Claude Design produces a first visual draft from a description: pages, prototypes, decks and one-pagers, editable in place.
- 02
Feed it your real material and your codebase. Generic input gives generic output.
- 03
Capture your brand as a design system once, then every mockup matches.
- 04
The handoff to code is the payoff, and it needs a website you own to land in.
Frequently asked questions
Who can use Claude Design?
It is included with Claude Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise subscriptions as a research preview, and uses those plans' usage limits. Enterprise organisations have it switched off until an administrator enables it.
Does it replace Figma or Canva?
Not for a design team. Anthropic positions it as a complement to Canva and exports to it. It is for getting from an idea to something visual quickly, and for handing that visual to code.
Can it build the page on my website?
It produces a handoff bundle for Claude Code, which can build the page inside a codebase you own. On a page builder there is nowhere for that bundle to go, so the mockup stays a picture.
What formats can I export?
A shareable link, PDF, PPTX, Canva, or standalone HTML files, according to Anthropic's launch documentation.