Overview
Open CoDesign is a desktop application that turns prompts into polished UI artifacts on your own machine. Its own summary is short: your prompts, your model, your laptop. The project positions itself as an open-source alternative to hosted prompt-to-design services, and lists Claude Design, v0 by Vercel, Lovable, Bolt.new and Figma AI as the tools it stands in for.
It is bring-your-own-model. A single API key works, as does signing in with a ChatGPT subscription, as does pointing it at a local Ollama install — so a session can run with nothing leaving the machine. The interface is a split view: the prompt on the left, the live artifact on the right. Version 0.2.0 added Agentic Design, with workspace-backed sessions, permissioned local tools, an upgraded Files panel, provider diagnostics, security hardening and DESIGN.md design systems; a branch in progress decomposes an image into a componentised ui_kits/ bundle for handoff to a coding agent, checked by a per-dimension visual parity judge.
Distribution is unusually careful for a project this young. Builds exist for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows (x64 and ARM64) and Linux (AppImage, deb, rpm); Homebrew Cask and Scoop are live, winget is in review at Microsoft, and every release ships SHA256SUMS.txt plus a CycloneDX SBOM. The installers are not yet notarized or Authenticode-signed, which the README documents along with the workaround on each platform. The code is MIT-licensed.
What it does
- Prompt on the left, live artifact on the right, in a local desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux
- Bring your own model: an API key, a ChatGPT/Codex subscription sign-in, or a local Ollama model
- Agentic Design (v0.2.0): workspace-backed sessions, permissioned local tools and a Files panel
- DESIGN.md design systems so generated artifacts follow your own conventions
- AI image generation and one-click CLIProxyAPI import (added in v0.1.4)
- Homebrew Cask and Scoop packages, with signed checksums and a CycloneDX SBOM on every release
- Provider diagnostics for debugging third-party relays and OpenAI-compatible endpoints
Getting started
The README puts time-to-first-artifact at about three minutes. It runs on macOS 12+, Windows 10+ and Linux with glibc ≥ 2.31, and needs one API key, a ChatGPT sign-in, or a local Ollama.
Install from a package manager
# macOS
brew install --cask opencoworkai/tap/open-codesign
# Windows (Scoop)
scoop bucket add opencoworkai https://github.com/OpenCoworkAI/scoop-bucket
scoop install opencoworkai/open-codesignOr download a build directly
The releases page carries .dmg (arm64 and x64), .exe setup files (x64 and arm64), and AppImage/.deb/.rpm for Linux, each with SHA256SUMS.txt and an SBOM.
open https://github.com/OpenCoworkAI/open-codesign/releasesClear the quarantine flag on macOS
Installers are not notarized yet, and on macOS Sequoia 15+ the right-click → Open trick no longer bypasses Gatekeeper. On Windows: SmartScreen → More info → Run anyway.
xattr -cr "/Applications/Open CoDesign.app"Add a provider on first launch
Paste an API key, sign in with a ChatGPT subscription, or point the app at a local Ollama endpoint — then prompt for your first artifact.
Commands and code are distilled from the project's own documentation — always check the official repo for the latest.
When to use it
- Prototype a UI from a prompt without sending the work to a hosted design service
- Run prompt-to-prototype entirely offline against a local Ollama model
- Reuse a model subscription you already pay for instead of buying a second design tool
- Hand a generated component bundle to a coding agent as the starting point for real implementation
How Open CoDesign compares
Open CoDesign alongside other open-source autonomous coding agents tools AI/TLDR tracks, ranked by GitHub stars.
| Tool | Stars | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| opencode | ★ 206k | OpenCode is an open source AI coding agent that runs in your terminal, with built-in build and plan agents and an optional desktop app. |
| Claude Code | ★ 145k | Anthropic's agentic coding tool for the terminal, IDE and GitHub: it understands your codebase, executes routine tasks, explains code and handles git workflows from natural-language commands. |
| OpenAI Codex | ★ 123k | OpenAI's cloud and CLI coding agent that writes features, fixes bugs, and proposes code changes across a repo, running tasks in parallel. |
| Gemini CLI | ★ 107k | An open-source command-line AI agent from Google that connects your terminal to Gemini models for reading code, editing files, running shell commands, and searching the web. |
| Pi | ★ 103k | Minimal terminal coding agent harness with four built-in tools, extended through TypeScript extensions, skills and prompt templates instead of forks. |
| OpenHands | ★ 87k | An open-source AI software-development agent that plans tasks, edits files, runs commands, and tests code, usable from a terminal CLI, a local web GUI, or a Python SDK. |
| Cline | ★ 67.7k | Open-source coding agent that runs as a VS Code or JetBrains extension, a terminal CLI, or an embeddable Node SDK, editing code and running commands with human-in-the-loop approval. |
| Open CoDesign | ★ 7.9k | A desktop prompt-to-prototype design tool that runs locally on your own API key, ChatGPT sign-in or a local Ollama model |