Next.js Hacker News
Claude Design System Prompt
106 points by handfuloflight 8 hours ago | 28 comments
  • simonw
    I can't even tell if this repository is based on prompts extracted from Claude Design or if the author had an LLM create all of these prompts in it from scratch.

    The fact that they encourage and accept PRs indicates that this isn't intended as a direct prompt extraction exposure project - plus the license, which should indicate they have the authorship necessary to license that content.

    Assuming this IS a complete ground-up implementation it really needs to link to demonstrations that it works. Without any evidence it's hard to justify spending time exploring it.

    • simonw
      If you ask Claude Design itself to list the names of the skills available to it you get:

        Animated video
  Interactive prototype
  Make a deck
  Make a doc
  Make tweakable
  Claude API in prototypes
  Frontend design
  Wireframe
  Export as PPTX (editable)
  Export as PPTX (screenshots)
  Create design system
  Save as PDF
  Save as standalone HTML
  Send to Canva
  Handoff to Claude Code
      Which does not match the structure of this project at all.
    • robotswantdata
      Agree, it’s vibe slopped rather than the actual Claude design system prompt
    • robkop
      Claude design's prompt is trivial to verify. They bundle it in the frontend bundle and send it on every network request.
  • jdormit
    This would be much more interesting if it detailed how the prompt/skills were reverse-engineered. As it is it seems like this could just be the output from “hey Claude write me a system prompt that works like Claude Design”.
    • boramdd
      honestly, i think you can just look at the network tab and see the "content" of the skills. Same has been true for their excel addin and bunch of other things.
    • bossyTeacher
      > This would be much more interesting if it detailed how the prompt/skills were reverse-engineered

      That would enable Anthropic to block the technique.

  • doginasuit
    I've been using Claude Design to make animated SVGs, and I've learned a thing or two about its limits and how to get around them for that narrow purpose.

    One thing I've learned is that you have to ask it to first come up with a robust way to define the geometry and then apply that to an SVG. Without that first step, it just guesses at where everything should be that isn't directly connected with a node, and it is hilariously bad. But with that first step it is capable of creating some incredible geometry algorithmically from detailed instructions.

    The other thing is that whatever tool prepares the svg for export will strip the animations as part of a sanitizing process, it won't even see that has occurred. You have to ask it to export to a different file type like my-animation.svg.txt, and then obviously you want to inspect it because svg can carry exploits not related to animation.

    Its ability to generate these designs is part toddler with a crayon, part savant. It won't be able to create any quality organic figures without reference material, but its ability to create intricate and mathematically correct design and animate it is promising. I haven't used it extensively so I'd be very interested to hear other observations and advice.

  • smokel
    > Open source, MIT licensed.

    I don't think that is how copyright licensing works.

    • dahart
      What do you mean? https://opensource.org/license/mit
      • smokel
        You cannot claim authorship of something that you were not even allowed to take in the first place. How would you then allow rights to somebody else?

        Seems pretty obvious to me.

        • colinhb
          In general I agree with you, especially about how things should work, and find the current trend of claiming LLM-washing code hugely problematic.

          I do wonder what the analysis would be of these prompts were vibe-coded, though, since in general LLM output can’t be copyrighted without significant human authorship, and Anthropic is pretty noisy about minimal human supervision.

          • jdiff
            The minimal human supervision for prompts seems like a pretty silly take. LLMs are still pretty bad at creating good prompts for LLMs. Give it a benchmark and some feedback and it can brute force it, but far less effectively. And I thought the point of using LLMs for development was increased efficiency.
        • dahart
          Oh you’re assuming the content in this repo is taken from somewhere? There are other sibling threads about this; you might be mis-interpreting the title.
          • smokel
            The GitHub page clearly states that it is reverse engineered.

            Even if you rewrite an article in your own words, you cannot claim copyright for that. At least, not to my knowledge.

            • dahart
              Oh you’re right, sorry! Well unless the Claude Design prompt is open source licensed, then correct, it’s not legal to publish it under an open license. That would be a copyright violation.
    • xyzzy_plugh
      Isn't it, though? What's the copyright status of the output of these tools?
      • smokel
        If this is regular output of the LLM, I'm not sure, but given that the author proclaims that this is reverse engineered, then they are not allowed to redistribute it under their own license terms. The terms of service are also pretty clear on this not being allowed, which makes it extra hard to defend (section 3.3):

        > You may not access or use, or help another person to access or use, our Services in the following ways:

        ...

        3. To decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or otherwise reduce our Services to human-readable form, except when these restrictions are prohibited by applicable law. [1]

        [1] https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms

        • xyzzy_plugh
          How can you tell what regular output is? Is there a special output when you successfully jailbreak? Is there a meaningful distinction between jailbroken prompts and hallucinations? Are certain prompts against the terms of service? If so, is it easy to determine if they are? Who determines this? If you produce output that is against the terms of service, does that change the copyright status of the works?

          I'd love to see this go to court.

        • throwaway7356
          The terms of service are between Anthropic and one of their subscribers. So Anthropic can maybe cancel their contract.

          This doesn't affect what copyright law allows or does not allow.

          Also I think Anthropic very much suppports gathering data by whatever means possible. That should work both ways.

          • smokel
            It does make a difference. If this text was generated by the LLM, then by those same terms you are allowed to publish the data. But given that it is reverse engineered, you are not allowed to do so.

            Note that even in the normal case, there are restrictions. You'd have to validate that the generated output is not copyrighted. Which in this case may not be trivial.

  • tallesborges92
    I trust on this: https://github.com/elder-plinius/CL4R1T4S/blob/main/ANTHROPI...

    It’s different than this one shared by the op, but Anthropic maybe updated the prompt

  • bobkb
    How to prove this is indeed the system prompt against a certain timestamp (in the past ) ?
  • exabrial
    This is pretty awesome. I’ve wanted to use Claude design, but with my regular MCP servers.

    Side note: ironic use of an llm writing the readme.

  • CartwheelLinux
    I'm calling BS, sorry. It looks light, and barely anything beyond surface level of what we could all could guess would be in a system prompt. This smells nothing more of a "claude give a system prompt that anthropic would use as a system prompt for claude"

    From what we know, there are some very specific details baked into the prompt as safety guards, where are those? Again calling BS and I'm not gonna waste more thought/words on this

  • cws_ai_buddy
    [flagged]
  • jickmao
    [flagged]