Set up your design system

You'll finish with: A published design system every new project inherits.

This is the chapter that makes Design worth having. You load your brand in once, at organisation level, and every project you start after that comes out looking like your business. You stop describing your colours.

Check you can get at it first. Claude Design is in beta on the Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans. On Enterprise it is switched off until an admin turns it on — so if you are on a company account and cannot find it, that is the account, not you. Whoever runs your Claude account goes to Organization settings → Capabilities and switches on the Claude Design toggle under Anthropic Labs.

The whole job, four steps

1️⃣OrganisationPick the one the system belongs to

2️⃣UploadYour real brand material

3️⃣ReviewColours, type, components, layout

4️⃣PublishOne toggle. Skip it and none of the rest counts.

Steps 1 to 3 take the time. Step 4 takes one click, and it is the one people miss.

Step 1 — get into the right organisation

Click pathclaude.ai/design→project picker, lower-left corner→the current organisation name→your organisation

A design system belongs to an organisation, not to you personally. Anthropic's instruction is exactly this: "In the lower-left corner of the project picker, click the current organization name. Select your organization, or create a new one."

If you are a one-person business you may only have one to choose from. Click it anyway and check the name, because everything after this hangs off getting it right.

Plain English

An organisation here just means the account the work sits under — the business, rather than you. Claude keeps the design system at that level so anyone you add later inherits it without being told anything. On your own it feels like pointless paperwork, right up until the day you take someone on.

Step 2 — feed it your brand

Onboarding asks you for material, and you can add more later from organisation settings. What to give it, and what to give it first, is the whole of the next chapter — so keep this simple for now and upload the best-looking real thing your business has ever produced.

A website, or a codebase if someone built you one
Screenshots, or an existing prototype
A slide deck or document that already looks right
Individual assets — logo files, colour palettes, typography

Step 3 — read what it built before you accept it

Claude reads your material and pulls out four things. Go through them one at a time and check each against reality.

Colour palette — primary, secondary and accent colours taken out of your assets
Typography — font families, sizes and weights
Components — buttons, cards, navigation and the other bits that repeat
Layout patterns — spacing, grids, page structure

Then test it rather than trusting it. The guidance is to create a test project and see whether the output matches what you expected. Ask for a landing page or a one-pager and look at it properly. If the colours are wrong, the fix is the source material, not the prompt — that is the next chapter.

Step 4 — the toggle everyone forgets

Here it is. "Once you're satisfied with the design system quality, make sure the 'Published' toggle is switched on." Until that toggle is on, your design system exists and does nothing at all.

What Published actually changes. After publishing, any project you create from the Claude Design homescreen while you are in that organisation uses your design system instead of the default. Two conditions in that sentence, and both are easy to miss: started from the Design homescreen, and while you are in that organisation.

The brand file — the part you write yourself

The design system covers how things look. A short written brand file covers the rules a screenshot cannot show you — which colour dominates, and how you sound. Keep one anyway: it works in ordinary chat and in Cowork, where there is no design system to inherit.

What to write down

ColoursHex codes, and which is the accent versus the background

TypeHeading font and body font, by name

LogoThe real file. Never a description of it.

ToneTwo adjectives and one thing to avoid

Be specific about the accent

Listing three colours gets you all three, everywhere, in equal amounts. Say which one dominates and which is used sparingly.

✗ "Our colours are navy, orange and grey"
✓ "Navy background, grey body text, orange only on buttons and key numbers"

# Brand

Background: #0b0726 (deep indigo)
Body text: #F5F3FB at 60% opacity
Accent: #34CABF — buttons and key numbers ONLY

Headings: Poppins, semibold, tight letter spacing
Body: Inter, regular

Tone: direct, plain. Never corporate.
Avoid: stock-photo people, exclamation marks, gradients
       used as flat background fill

Do this now

Open claude.ai/design. Click the organisation name in the lower-left corner of the project picker and select the organisation your business works in.
Upload your best-looking real asset. One good thing, not twenty rough ones.
Read the generated palette, typography, components and layout. Check the hex codes against your actual brand.
Create a test project, ask for a simple one-pager, and look at what comes back.
When it is right, switch the Published toggle on. This is the step. Nothing works without it.
Write the short brand file above and save it in your project, so chat and Cowork know it too.

How to know it worked

Start a brand new project from the Claude Design homescreen, in that same organisation, and ask for something plain — "a one-page quote summary" — without mentioning a single colour. It should come back in your colours and your fonts, unprompted.

If it comes back generic, it is almost never the prompt. Check the Published toggle is actually on. Check the organisation name in the lower-left corner is the one holding your system. And check you started the project from the Design homescreen — that is the condition in the documentation, and a project started somewhere else is not the test.

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