Krit vs Claude Design: the canvas any agent can draw on
Claude Design is good, and it settled an old argument: designing with an agent on a canvas is the right shape. I am glad Anthropic shipped it. The question now is not whether to do this. It is whose canvas you do it on, how open it is, and whether it can hold a whole product instead of one screen at a time.
Same shape, different bet on how open it should be
Claude Design and Krit agree on the big thing. You describe what you want, an agent draws it on a canvas, and you steer it by talking and pointing instead of pushing pixels. That part is settled, and seeing Anthropic build it is validation, not a threat.
Where we split is openness. Claude Design is a feature that lives inside Claude and works one artifact at a time. Krit is a standalone canvas that plugs into whatever coding agent you already use, holds your whole product across many screens at once, and can point at your real running app. Same idea, a more open bet about who owns the surface.
What matters
Krit
Claude Design
Which agent drives it
Any agent you already use, over MCP
Claude, and only inside Claude
The canvas
Infinite, many screens at once
One artifact at a time in a preview
Designs against
Your real running app, via the dev server
A self-contained artifact, plus web capture
Where it lives
A canvas that plugs into your stack
Inside the Claude chat app
Getting in
One flat plan
A Claude Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise subscription
Range of visual work
Product UI, flows, and motion
UI plus slides, decks, and one-pagers
Multi-screen flows
The whole flow lives side by side
A separate request per screen
Output
Editable canvas plus code
Deployable code plus a Claude Code handoff
Claude Design got the shape right
I need to say this plainly, because the lazy version of this page would pretend Claude Design is bad. It is not. It is a genuinely good tool, it is backed by Anthropic, and it works the way I have been telling people design should work: chat on one side, a canvas on the other, an agent doing the drawing while you direct.
So this is not a page about who has the better idea. We have the same idea. When the biggest lab in the space ships your shape, that is not a threat, it is the market agreeing with you. The interesting question starts after that agreement: how open is the canvas, and how much of a real product can it actually hold.
Use the agent you already use
Claude Design only works if you are inside Claude and paying for it. The agent is fixed, the home is fixed, and your design tool quietly picks your model for you. For a lot of people that is fine, because they already live there.
Krit takes the other path. It plugs into whatever coding agent you already use through MCP, whether that is Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, or something else. The canvas is the constant and the agent is yours to choose. I do not think a design surface should lock you to one model, any more than your editor should.
One artifact is not a product
This is the difference I feel most. Claude Design gives you one artifact at a time in a preview pane. That is great for a landing page or a single mockup. But a product is not one screen. It is a flow of screens that all have to feel like one thing, and you only see whether they do when they sit next to each other.
Krit is an infinite canvas. The whole flow lives side by side, the empty states next to the full ones, the onboarding next to the dashboard, and the agent keeps them consistent across all of it. You are designing the product, not regenerating one screen at a time and hoping they add up.
Design against the real thing, not a screenshot
Claude Design can capture elements from your live site so a prototype looks like your product. That is a nice touch, but it is still building a separate artifact that resembles the real thing.
Krit can point straight at your running app through the dev server, so you are designing against the actual product, with its real components and real states, not a look-alike. The gap between what you designed and what ships gets smaller the closer the canvas sits to the running code, and Krit sits as close as it can.
BE HONEST
When Claude Design is the right call
If you already live in Claude and pay for Max or Team, Claude Design is right there with nothing new to set up. That convenience is real, and for a lot of people it is the whole decision.
And if you need more than product UI, Claude Design does a wider spread than Krit does. Pitch decks, slides, one-pagers, marketing collateral, all from the same place. Krit is focused on shipping product screens and flows. If your week is mostly decks and presentations, or your handoff target is specifically Claude Code, reach for Claude Design and do not feel bad about it.
BUILD IT ON THE CANVAS
Tell your agent what to design. Watch it appear.
Stop drawing it by hand or designing it blind. Direct an agent on a real canvas and leave with code.