Open Design is a local-first, open-source alternative to Anthropic's Claude Design. It transforms any coding agent CLI on your PATH — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor Agent, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Qwen, GitHub Copilot CLI, Hermes, Kimi, Pi, or Kiro — into a full-stack design engine, powered by 31 composable Skills and 72 brand-grade Design Systems. No cloud dependency, no subscription — just run it locally or deploy it to your own server.

• Multi-Agent Backend: Auto-detects up to 11 coding agent CLIs from your PATH and routes design tasks intelligently. Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, OpenCode, Qwen, Copilot CLI, Hermes, Kimi, Pi, and Kiro.
• Rich Skill System: 31 composable Skills handle everything from brand-grade UI generation and design system application to HyperFrame prototyping, PDF/PPTX/MP4 export, and more.
• Local-First Architecture: Projects stored in daemon SQLite (not cloud), giving you full data ownership with optional BYOK proxy for OpenAI-compatible endpoints.

Contributor @pftom proposed adding a third content axis to encode universal design craft knowledge (typography, color theory, spacing, visual hierarchy) as structured reference files. The discussion evolved through iterative reviews, with reviewer @lefarcen praising the "path-traversal defense, silent missing-file fallback, clean test coverage" and requesting hardening around empirical justification for thresholds.

After addressing all P3 suggestions, the implementation landed: "Added 'Why silent fallback?' section (forward-compat rationale) + empirical justification for 0.06em threshold" — demonstrating a high-quality, collaborative open-source workflow.

Issue #225 — 6 comments | Label: feature

A critical bug report from @gonewx surfaced after the TypeScript migration (PR #118): "After upgrading, previously created projects don't load." The root cause was identified by @lefarcen: project storage had migrated from browser localStorage to daemon SQLite, so old project files existed but the new code couldn't find them. The team diagnosed the exact breaking change mechanism and is working on a migration path.

Issue #154 — 20 comments | Labels: bug, priority:p0

Contributor @KNIGHTABDO identified a critical Windows bug: large prompts cause spawn ENAMETOOLONG because CreateProcess has a ~32KB command-line cap. The fix delivers prompts via stdin for non-Claude agents, and reviewer @alchemistklk linked it to broader runtime cost optimization discussions.

Issue #15 — 5 comments | Label: bug

Open Design is rapidly evolving with an active, high-quality contributor community. The project demonstrates how AI coding agents can be composed into a legitimate design workflow — not just for mockups, but for real production-ready UI across web, desktop, mobile, and presentation formats. The Apache 2.0 license and local-first philosophy make it a compelling open-source alternative to proprietary AI design tools. With 11 supported agent CLIs, 31 skills, and 72 design systems out of the box, it's one of the most capable open-source design automation projects available today.

⭐ 11,835 GitHub Stars | 1,332 Forks | Apache 2.0 License

🔗 View on GitHub — nexu-io/open-design