6 ms·

I used it today to take a look at my previously built design system with Logos, branding, fonts, and everything else. After a lot of annoying tweaking back and

I used it today to take a look at my previously built design system with Logos, branding, fonts, and everything else. After a lot of annoying tweaking back and forth, finally, I got something that was satisfactory. Then I looked at the usage and it said I had used 95% of my Claude design usage for the week! This isn't a real tool. This is a plaything, if that's what they're providing as examples.

brandensilva 6mo ago
Yup it's based off their playground so plaything is the right word. It's a wrapper around that. I definitely appreciate the better design output from Claude code but it has a ways to go before it can replace serious design contenders.
adriand 6mo ago
I had a similar experience with running out of usage quite quickly, after setting up one design system properly, and then getting pretty close with a second one. But it's a research preview - I'm sure it will change. I was quite happy with what I pulled off using the first design system: I wanted a new footer section for my IPAAS startup, it generated four options, the fourth of which was quite good. We iterated on it for a bit, then I pulled it into Claude Code (that integrated feature is very cool), CC built it, I deployed it, done. (Bottom section of https://tediware.com/ https://tediware.com/ if you're interested, the bit with "Origin story" on the left and the signup panel on the right). It was not a complicated build by any means but I liked the concept it developed and it was dead-easy to make it all happen. I think the ideas in the UI are very good. Still rough, but you can see where this could go, and it's got a ton of potential.
- slopinthebag 6mo ago
  I mean, it's fine and serves it's purpose, but I'm a bit confused what you are getting that you wouldn't get with the millions of pre-made designs and design systems? Like Tailwind UI for example. https://tailwindcss.com/plus/ui-blocks https://tailwindcss.com/plus/ui-blocks
  - adriand 6mo ago
    Iterative experience (experimenting with different ideas, deciding what works best) and speed of execution (once I was happy with it, making it happen required almost no work).
    - slopinthebag 6mo ago
      Thats fair. Could you have the same iterative experience with an LLM, but starting with a prebuilt base and iterating from there?
      - throwaway7783 6mo ago
        Yes. Even without Claude design and just Claude code, it can use existing design and build out new mockups in-app, which is much easier to demo , tweak and then implement the backend (if any) - all through Claude Code (or Codex if you prefer that). We use both and are now leaning more towards Codex over Claude
  - apsurd 6mo ago
    I find that with the ubiquity of Tailwind, developers treat design as a "solved problem". What's missing is the specific evolution of one's product and the resultant information architecture. The sibling response is my experience as well, design is an incredibly interactive exercise. Granted, not every component on every surface will need this amount of scrutiny. But I'm usually the outlier developer warning teammates that design is not a solved problem. Granted, there's a huge difference between an existing app and its evolution and throwing a nextjs landing page up in search of any life.
    - skydhash 6mo ago
      Even with bootstrap, design was a solved problem. What you bring with a UI designer is appeal (aka make thing pretty and enjoyable). If you want utilitarian, even the old x11 toolkit like Athena, Win 98 era widgets would do the part.
enraged_camel 6mo ago
It's in research preview. I suspect limits are low on purpose. FWIW, I gave it twelve screenshots of different pages in my app and it did a really excellent job fixing them up. Consumed just 40% of weekly quota - still too high but it's probably a YMMV situation.
jcims 6mo ago
> I used it today to take a look at my previously built design system with Logos, branding, fonts, and everything else. The fact that you are using this language tells me you are probably more advanced than the average individual, and likely have higher expectations. My sister-in-law has a small apparel company. She’s developed quite a bit of skill over the past six years but she really struggled at the start. She had great ideas, but translating them to something she could apply was frustrating. *Anything* that could have helped her there would have been worth a look.
- hellojason 6mo ago
  Funny. My read on that language was this person has absolutely no idea what a truly robust and scalable design system and component library actually are, particularly within the scope of a successful business. Well built ones serve every facet of the organization, not just the product.
  - hellojason 6mo ago
    Apologies to parent. This reply was intended for a separate thread.
- stingraycharles 6mo ago
  > The fact that you are using this language tells me you are probably more advanced than the average individual, and likely have higher expectations. I am terrible at frontend, but I’m a decent engineer, and I needed to do frontend with AI a few weeks ago. The first thing I did is figure out how other people manage this; apparently there’s a whole design system made of atoms, molecules and organisms that works well. I asked Claude about this, set up a workflow together, and now I have a design system markdown, maintaining the design standards using the atoms etc vocabulary, and it works really well. If I can pick this up in a few days, most people that are serious about design are able to as well.
  - OccamsMirror 6mo ago
    I've never heard of this design system. Do you have any decent referencs?
alwillis 6mo ago
Things to keep in mind: • Claude Design uses Opus 4.7, which is more expensive than earlier models. • It's just Day 2; it's not a finished product. It's ridiculous how quickly Anthropic iterates. • If you've been using Claude for a while, Design already knows your style and preferences. You'd have to start from scratch using a different AI design tool. I don’t doubt that'll pay dividends in the long run.
- wahnfrieden 6mo ago
  Be glad it's not Day 200: Opus models are only getting more expensive to use.
- deadbabe 6mo ago
  It will never be cheaper than what it is today. Anthropic is heavily subsidizing.
  - alwillis 6mo ago
    > It will never be cheaper than what it is today. Anthropic is heavily subsidizing. We don't know that for sure—they've dropped prices before: 1. Claude 3 → Claude 3.5/3.7 generation (mid-2024 to early 2025): Haiku went from $0.25/$1.25 to $0.80/$4.00 per MTok — this was actually a price increase for Haiku, but Sonnet stayed flat at $3/$15 while delivering significantly better performance, effectively a price-per-capability reduction. 2. Claude 3/4 Opus → Claude Opus 4.5/4.6 (late 2025): This was the big one. Opus dropped from $15/$75 per MTok down to $5/$25 per MTok — a 67% reduction on input and output. This is the most significant explicit price cut Anthropic has made, delivering a far more capable model at one-third the price.
    - versteegen 6mo ago
      They're definitely not subsidizing API pricing, can't believe how prevalent that fallacy is on HN of all places. The question is how profitable Claude Code is. Your example 2 is real and major but your example 1 is ridiculous, almost any new model from any company is better at the same price, and how is increasing the price an example of decreasing prices?? BTW, Github Copilot is pricing Opus 4.7 at 2.5x the cost of Opus 4.6 at promotional pricing (so maybe it'll be 4-5x). But Github's request based pricing is insane, completely divorced from their actual costs (you can achieve 1+M tokens for $0.10 if you give it a large request), so I'd assume they're losing a lot of money.
qingcharles 6mo ago
It produced great results for me, in 10 mins, and then my usage was blown and now I have to wait a week. It did let me export the ZIP, though. I tried throwing the contents of the ZIP into Stitch With Google, but it didn't work very well.
hbosch 6mo ago
I used Claude Design to see how it'd spit out a design I already had been working on for some weeks, given a dense enough prompt and a decent requirements document (I did not feed it visuals). I thought the output was pretty good! It didn't match the style we're after at all but it did do some logical content grouping and made some IA decisions I decided to pull into my own explorations. Overall I left with a good impression. And then I was scrolling Twitter, and saw someone else post their own "success story" and the design was nearly identical to the mock up Claude Design made for me. Lol. The homogenization problem will continue to plague tools like these to some degree, much in the same way AI generated text or code or imagery has a sort of homogenous tone or feel to it.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  Homogenous might be awesome. I miss predictable UIs.
  - andai 6mo ago
    Damn you just made me realize. We used to have everything having personality but being consistent as far as UX goes. Now everything looks like tax forms and the UX is all over the place.
    - yangm97 6mo ago
      That’s because designers stopped caring about following each platform’s guidelines because they want to spread “brand recognition” or some shit like that.
      - b112 6mo ago
        This exudes everywhere. I've had cases of where some weirdo company changes their packaging on, say, soap... and now I literally can't find what I used to use. The logic is that some other company is cloning their look, so they want to "stand out" again, and thus change theirs. Sometimes, I'll manage to find the brand with the new colours and logo. But often even then, I can't find the specific product from that brand. They've changed it so much I can't tell which version I picked before. Which makes me look for something more like what I used to have. Good job "standing out" guys. I'd say literally maybe 1/3 of the time, I've just literally lost products. I don't know the name, just how it looks.
alanmercer 6mo ago
[flagged]
j45 6mo ago
It's early. Anthropic has managed to figure out a lot of reading in between the lines. I'm not sure how this will be any different.
bmurphy1976 6mo ago
What plan are you on? That's a really critical piece of info to be able to evaluate your experience.
changyou 6mo ago
[dead]

brandensilva 6mo ago

Yup it's based off their playground so plaything is the right word. It's a wrapper around that. I definitely appreciate the better design output from Claude code but it has a ways to go before it can replace serious design contenders.

adriand 6mo ago

I had a similar experience with running out of usage quite quickly, after setting up one design system properly, and then getting pretty close with a second one. But it's a research preview - I'm sure it will change. I was quite happy with what I pulled off using the first design system: I wanted a new footer section for my IPAAS startup, it generated four options, the fourth of which was quite good. We iterated on it for a bit, then I pulled it into Claude Code (that integrated feature is very cool), CC built it, I deployed it, done. (Bottom section of https://tediware.com/ https://tediware.com/ if you're interested, the bit with "Origin story" on the left and the signup panel on the right). It was not a complicated build by any means but I liked the concept it developed and it was dead-easy to make it all happen. I think the ideas in the UI are very good. Still rough, but you can see where this could go, and it's got a ton of potential.

slopinthebag 6mo ago
I mean, it's fine and serves it's purpose, but I'm a bit confused what you are getting that you wouldn't get with the millions of pre-made designs and design systems? Like Tailwind UI for example. https://tailwindcss.com/plus/ui-blocks https://tailwindcss.com/plus/ui-blocks
- adriand 6mo ago
  Iterative experience (experimenting with different ideas, deciding what works best) and speed of execution (once I was happy with it, making it happen required almost no work).
  - slopinthebag 6mo ago
    Thats fair. Could you have the same iterative experience with an LLM, but starting with a prebuilt base and iterating from there?
    - throwaway7783 6mo ago
      Yes. Even without Claude design and just Claude code, it can use existing design and build out new mockups in-app, which is much easier to demo , tweak and then implement the backend (if any) - all through Claude Code (or Codex if you prefer that). We use both and are now leaning more towards Codex over Claude
- apsurd 6mo ago
  I find that with the ubiquity of Tailwind, developers treat design as a "solved problem". What's missing is the specific evolution of one's product and the resultant information architecture. The sibling response is my experience as well, design is an incredibly interactive exercise. Granted, not every component on every surface will need this amount of scrutiny. But I'm usually the outlier developer warning teammates that design is not a solved problem. Granted, there's a huge difference between an existing app and its evolution and throwing a nextjs landing page up in search of any life.
  - skydhash 6mo ago
    Even with bootstrap, design was a solved problem. What you bring with a UI designer is appeal (aka make thing pretty and enjoyable). If you want utilitarian, even the old x11 toolkit like Athena, Win 98 era widgets would do the part.

enraged_camel 6mo ago

It's in research preview. I suspect limits are low on purpose. FWIW, I gave it twelve screenshots of different pages in my app and it did a really excellent job fixing them up. Consumed just 40% of weekly quota - still too high but it's probably a YMMV situation.

jcims 6mo ago

> I used it today to take a look at my previously built design system with Logos, branding, fonts, and everything else. The fact that you are using this language tells me you are probably more advanced than the average individual, and likely have higher expectations. My sister-in-law has a small apparel company. She’s developed quite a bit of skill over the past six years but she really struggled at the start. She had great ideas, but translating them to something she could apply was frustrating. *Anything* that could have helped her there would have been worth a look.

hellojason 6mo ago
Funny. My read on that language was this person has absolutely no idea what a truly robust and scalable design system and component library actually are, particularly within the scope of a successful business. Well built ones serve every facet of the organization, not just the product.
- hellojason 6mo ago
  Apologies to parent. This reply was intended for a separate thread.
stingraycharles 6mo ago
> The fact that you are using this language tells me you are probably more advanced than the average individual, and likely have higher expectations. I am terrible at frontend, but I’m a decent engineer, and I needed to do frontend with AI a few weeks ago. The first thing I did is figure out how other people manage this; apparently there’s a whole design system made of atoms, molecules and organisms that works well. I asked Claude about this, set up a workflow together, and now I have a design system markdown, maintaining the design standards using the atoms etc vocabulary, and it works really well. If I can pick this up in a few days, most people that are serious about design are able to as well.
- OccamsMirror 6mo ago
  I've never heard of this design system. Do you have any decent referencs?

alwillis 6mo ago

Things to keep in mind: • Claude Design uses Opus 4.7, which is more expensive than earlier models. • It's just Day 2; it's not a finished product. It's ridiculous how quickly Anthropic iterates. • If you've been using Claude for a while, Design already knows your style and preferences. You'd have to start from scratch using a different AI design tool. I don’t doubt that'll pay dividends in the long run.

wahnfrieden 6mo ago
Be glad it's not Day 200: Opus models are only getting more expensive to use.
deadbabe 6mo ago
It will never be cheaper than what it is today. Anthropic is heavily subsidizing.
- alwillis 6mo ago
  > It will never be cheaper than what it is today. Anthropic is heavily subsidizing. We don't know that for sure—they've dropped prices before: 1. Claude 3 → Claude 3.5/3.7 generation (mid-2024 to early 2025): Haiku went from $0.25/$1.25 to $0.80/$4.00 per MTok — this was actually a price increase for Haiku, but Sonnet stayed flat at $3/$15 while delivering significantly better performance, effectively a price-per-capability reduction. 2. Claude 3/4 Opus → Claude Opus 4.5/4.6 (late 2025): This was the big one. Opus dropped from $15/$75 per MTok down to $5/$25 per MTok — a 67% reduction on input and output. This is the most significant explicit price cut Anthropic has made, delivering a far more capable model at one-third the price.
  - versteegen 6mo ago
    They're definitely not subsidizing API pricing, can't believe how prevalent that fallacy is on HN of all places. The question is how profitable Claude Code is. Your example 2 is real and major but your example 1 is ridiculous, almost any new model from any company is better at the same price, and how is increasing the price an example of decreasing prices?? BTW, Github Copilot is pricing Opus 4.7 at 2.5x the cost of Opus 4.6 at promotional pricing (so maybe it'll be 4-5x). But Github's request based pricing is insane, completely divorced from their actual costs (you can achieve 1+M tokens for $0.10 if you give it a large request), so I'd assume they're losing a lot of money.

qingcharles 6mo ago

It produced great results for me, in 10 mins, and then my usage was blown and now I have to wait a week. It did let me export the ZIP, though. I tried throwing the contents of the ZIP into Stitch With Google, but it didn't work very well.

hbosch 6mo ago

I used Claude Design to see how it'd spit out a design I already had been working on for some weeks, given a dense enough prompt and a decent requirements document (I did not feed it visuals). I thought the output was pretty good! It didn't match the style we're after at all but it did do some logical content grouping and made some IA decisions I decided to pull into my own explorations. Overall I left with a good impression. And then I was scrolling Twitter, and saw someone else post their own "success story" and the design was nearly identical to the mock up Claude Design made for me. Lol. The homogenization problem will continue to plague tools like these to some degree, much in the same way AI generated text or code or imagery has a sort of homogenous tone or feel to it.

ceejayoz 6mo ago
Homogenous might be awesome. I miss predictable UIs.
- andai 6mo ago
  Damn you just made me realize. We used to have everything having personality but being consistent as far as UX goes. Now everything looks like tax forms and the UX is all over the place.
  - yangm97 6mo ago
    That’s because designers stopped caring about following each platform’s guidelines because they want to spread “brand recognition” or some shit like that.
    - b112 6mo ago
      This exudes everywhere. I've had cases of where some weirdo company changes their packaging on, say, soap... and now I literally can't find what I used to use. The logic is that some other company is cloning their look, so they want to "stand out" again, and thus change theirs. Sometimes, I'll manage to find the brand with the new colours and logo. But often even then, I can't find the specific product from that brand. They've changed it so much I can't tell which version I picked before. Which makes me look for something more like what I used to have. Good job "standing out" guys. I'd say literally maybe 1/3 of the time, I've just literally lost products. I don't know the name, just how it looks.

alanmercer 6mo ago

[flagged]

j45 6mo ago

It's early. Anthropic has managed to figure out a lot of reading in between the lines. I'm not sure how this will be any different.

bmurphy1976 6mo ago

What plan are you on? That's a really critical piece of info to be able to evaluate your experience.

changyou 6mo ago

[dead]