What /design does inside Claude Code
Anthropic has released a /design command in Claude Code that lets developers generate editable UI artboards directly inside the CLI and Desktop apps, in research preview. A typical invocation, "/design a few options for {feature}," produces multiple artboards that the developer can pick from, tweak on the canvas, and then hand off for implementation in the project's own stack. Anthropic developer advocate Nate Parrott said on X that Claude reads the existing codebase, matches the current UI style, and produces shareable mockups as Artifacts.
The new command is built on the same artboard system that underpins Claude Design, which Anthropic launched in April, and folds that workflow into the coding session. According to coverage of Parrott's announcement, the editor and prompting features from Claude Design now sit inside Claude Code, so the design decision happens before code is written rather than after a separate export step. Designs carry over into the build step, though they still need to be saved manually for now.
Availability and how to access it
/design is available to Claude Code subscribers on Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans after updating the client, with the feature activated by running "claude update." The rollout is described as a research preview rather than a general release, and there is no separate regional price list; UAE developers reach the command on the same plans as everywhere else once their accounts receive it. Early users note that generating several artboards on top of a coding session's existing context is token-hungry, and recommend reviewing the first artboard against the project's actual design tokens before it ships.
Developer workflow changes
The /design command removes the routine of leaving the terminal for claude.ai/design, exporting the result, and pasting it back into the repo. In a demo shown by Parrott, a prompt such as "/design redesign the composer based on what people actually use it for" produced option artboards with notes on the trade-offs between versions, and the follow-up "implement option B with my edits" targeted the chosen artboard against the live codebase. The artboard step now lives where the code is written, so the selected mockup becomes the direct target for implementation rather than a separate reference image.
Other developments
Separately, Anthropic is documented as having earlier doubled the 5-hour rolling session limits for paid Claude Code plans while keeping weekly usage caps unchanged, with a temporary 50% weekly boost having ended on July 19. That same reporting notes the Claude Design tool shares its usage pool with Claude Code, so design and coding tasks draw from the same allowance.
Share this article
