Superdesign

Superdesign helps you (1) find design inspirations/styles and (2) generate/iterate design drafts on an infinite canvas.

Core scenarios (what this skill handles)

1. "superdesign init" (the user asking for repo analysis) — analyze the repo and build UI context to .superdesign/init/. This is this skill's own analysis pass; the CLI's init command is a different thing entirely (it installs skill files) — never run it to build .superdesign/init/.
2. Help me design X (feature/page/flow) — the target decides the SOP: an existing rendered page is reproduced first (ground truth), while a brand-new page (in a real repo or from scratch) is designed directly with no reproduction step; see UI TARGET ROUTING in SUPERDESIGN.md
3. Set design system (optionally seed or refresh it from a live site via extract-website --design-md — you'll choose create-from / inspired-by / update-existing, asking first if a design-system.md already exists; see SUPERDESIGN.md SOP: BRAND NEW PROJECT Step 2)
4. Help me improve design of X
5. Make a poster / marketing asset (flyer, cover art, social feed post, story, channel cover, thumbnail, ad creative) — a static artwork, not a page. Skip repo init/analysis; read GRAPHIC.md and follow it (you generate the key visual with your own image tool, upload it, then compose the artwork on a fixed canvas; platform dimension table included).
6. Design from a live website / reference URL (borrow a style, restyle, recombine, or plan a rebuild) — extract a reference site's design DNA (style guide, design tokens, content structure, brand assets, a static reference clone) with extract-website, then design with it. Read WEBSITE.md and follow its recipes. Note: via the CLI a "recreate"/"clone" is a style-informed rebuild — faithful pixel-recreation and editable on-canvas clones are done in the Superdesign app (superdesign.dev), not the CLI.
7. Design with your own model — when the user explicitly asks, or create-design-draft / iterate-design-draft still fails after one retry, follow design-with-your-model.md to author and import the draft yourself.

Step 0 — Environment preflight (BEFORE any CLI step)

Superdesign runs entirely through its CLI, so you must be able to execute shell commands. Confirm that capability first, before any CLI verification.

If you have no way to run shell commands in this environment (no terminal/execution tool at all), OR your very first bare npx --yes @superdesign/cli@latest preflight attempt fails because command execution itself is unavailable (the harness reports it cannot run commands / there is no shell) then STOP. Do NOT keep retrying or improvise workarounds. Tell the user once, and pick the message that matches where you are running:

• Standard ChatGPT chat without Work Mode tools — this exact copy, because the Work tab is the fix:

  Chat isn't supported by the Superdesign plugin. Please switch to the Work tab and paste this prompt in for the full experience.
  

• Any other harness (a coding agent whose shell is unavailable or disabled) — do NOT send the ChatGPT copy; there is no Work tab to switch to. Say plainly that Superdesign drives its CLI over the shell, that this session cannot run shell commands, and that they can re-run it in a session with shell access or design in the web app at https://superdesign.dev.

Step 1 — Is there a codebase to analyze?

Two entry paths. Choose one with this cheap, deterministic check BEFORE any init or design work.

No meaningful codebase (empty workspace, scratch/sandbox dir, no frontend code) — treat the workspace as "no codebase" when ALL of these hold:

• No .superdesign/init/ files already exist, AND
• No dependency manifest with frontend deps (no package.json, or a package.json whose deps include no frontend framework/UI library — react, vue, svelte, angular, next, nuxt, astro, etc.), AND
• No frontend source found (a quick scan for .tsx/.jsx/.vue/.svelte files, any .html/.css files such as a root index.html + style.css, or a src//app//components/ dir with UI files, turns up nothing).

→ SKIP repo init entirely. Do NOT "analyze" an empty sandbox, and do NOT ask the user to point you at a repo they don't have. Instead, gather design context conversationally FIRST: ask what they want to build, the target audience/platform, style/brand preferences, and any reference designs or inspirations. Then design from that conversation via the BRAND NEW PROJECT path in SUPERDESIGN.md.

Real codebase present (any frontend code, or an existing .superdesign/init/) — the repo-init path below is MANDATORY; run the full analysis before designing.

Exception — standalone extraction: if the task is ONLY to extract a site's design DNA or set/refresh design-system.md from a URL (extract-website → design-system.md, no design generation; read WEBSITE.md for the recipes), run it WITHOUT repo init — extracting an external site's style doesn't require analyzing the user's codebase. Init is still required before generating designs FOR the existing codebase's UI (reproducing/redesigning an existing page).

Exception — graphics: posters/marketing assets (scenario 5) skip init even in a real codebase — the brief carries the style, and most of init's output (components, layouts, routes, pages) has no bearing on a fixed-canvas artwork. The graphic brief round asks whether the artwork should be on-brand with this repo's product (GRAPHIC.md Step 1); only an on-brand "yes" pulls in the design-system/brand context — running init first only if that context doesn't already exist.

Init: Repo Analysis (real-codebase path)

When a real codebase is present (per Step 1, and neither Step 1 exception — standalone extraction, graphics — applies) and init is NOT complete, you MUST automatically:

1. Create the .superdesign/init/ directory
2. Read INIT.md
3. Follow its instructions to analyze the repo and write context files

Init-complete test (one decidable rule, used everywhere): init is complete only if all six named files below exist AND are non-empty. A directory that is missing any of them, or holds an empty one (e.g. an interrupted init), is NOT complete — rerun the full init, which regenerates all six; overwriting existing files is expected and fine.

Do NOT ask the user to do this manually — just do it.

Mandatory Init Files

If init is complete (all six files present and non-empty), you MUST read ALL of them FIRST before any design task:

• components.md — shared UI primitives with full source code
• layouts.md — shared layout components (nav, sidebar, header, footer)
• routes.md — page/route mapping
• theme.md — design tokens, CSS variables, Tailwind config
• pages.md — page component dependency trees (which files each page needs)
• extractable-components.md — components that can be extracted as reusable DraftComponents

When designing for an existing page: First check pages.md for the page's dependency tree — the candidate set of --context-file files. Pass them under the PAYLOAD BUDGET rules in SUPERDESIGN.md so the payload does not 400. Then also add the globals.css tokens, tailwind.config, and design-system.md.

Superdesign CLI (MUST use before any command)

IMPORTANT: Run the CLI on demand with npx --yes @superdesign/cli@latest. Start every session with the bare command — it IS the preflight.

1. Preflight once:

   npx --yes @superdesign/cli@latest
   

   The bare command verifies everything in one shot: that the CLI runs at all, an auth: status line (authenticated as team "…" vs not authenticated — run superdesign login), and a list of recent projects — read that list when deciding whether to reuse an existing project or create-project. When reusing one, fetch-design-nodes --project-id <id> lists its drafts and their ids; that is the only way to get a draft-id for work started in an earlier session.

2. If the auth: line says not authenticated, run login NOW, before any real command:

   npx --yes @superdesign/cli@latest login
   

   Wait for login to complete successfully before proceeding.

3. Run the intended commands with the same npx --yes @superdesign/cli@latest prefix. A session can still expire mid-flow — handle a later auth/login error per the failure block below.

Never assume the user is already logged in — read the preflight's auth: line instead of guessing or probing with real commands.

When a command fails

• Auth/login error (the CLI ran but rejected the session): run login (above), then retry the intended command ONCE. If login itself fails (headless/no-browser auth, expired flow, user declines), tell the user plainly and STOP — do not keep retrying or improvise.
• extract-website fails or times out (it can take ~60–120s): retry ONCE. If it still fails, offer to continue WITHOUT the extraction (design from the conversation / existing design system) rather than blocking.
• General rule: retry a failed command at most once. If create-design-draft or iterate-design-draft still fails, continue via design-with-your-model.md; otherwise report the failure and stop.

Command examples

Always use the full on-demand runner prefix, e.g.:

npx --yes @superdesign/cli@latest create-project --title "X"

Full invocations live at their use sites — the SOPs in SUPERDESIGN.md and the graphic steps in GRAPHIC.md; flag sets come from <command> --help, and the COMMAND CONTRACT in SUPERDESIGN.md covers the traps help leaves out.

The CLI defaults to an agent-optimized output (compact TOON plus help[] next-step hints); add --json only when you need the full machine-readable payload.

Surface the canvas URL

Every project/draft command's default output includes a canvas: link (the project canvas, https://superdesign.dev/teams/<teamId>/projects/<projectId>) and, for drafts, a preview: link (https://superdesign.dev/preview/draft/<draftId>). Read these from the command output — do NOT hand-construct them (the ids are server-generated).

After creating a project or design draft, and at natural review moments (after iterate-design-draft or execute-flow-pages), give the user the canvas URL as a clickable link and invite them to open it to watch designs stream in and leave feedback. Adding ?live=1 to the canvas URL opens the live view where drafts appear as they generate.

Browser Choice

create-project auto-opens the canvas in user's browser by default. Leave it on, and tell the user the canvas was opened (with the canvas URL as a clickable link). Only pass --no-open when there's no user-facing browser (CI, headless).

After generating: offer to go further

Always close with a short, warm follow-up that offers to go further (on every surface). Ask one question with 2 to 3 concrete options tailored to what you just made, not a generic list. For example: try a different hero image or key visual direction, try an alternate layout or composition, or generate a few more variations or asset ideas as surprises. Only generate after the user picks, since every generation spends credits.

(Graphics get a dedicated one-round visual self-review before this close — GRAPHIC.md Step 5. UI drafts are reviewed by the user on the canvas.)

How it works

Read SUPERDESIGN.md, then follow its instructions.