CoDesign

CoDesign

The design layer for the agent era.

CoDesign gives your coding agent a real design engine. Generate, edit, and automate fully editable designs — print, social, and video — straight from the chat, then export print-ready PDFs, images, mp4 video, and more. You steer, the agent edits the same scene, and you keep control of the outcome.

It ships as an MCP server (plus a Claude Code plugin) that hands your agent IMG.LY's CE.SDK CreativeEngine — the same production engine behind IMG.LY's commercial SDKs. Every recipe below spawns the published npm package @imgly/codesign-mcp over stdio; no separate install step — npx fetches it on first use.

What you can make

Ask your agent, in plain language:

• Resize for every channel — "Take this Instagram post and make the Story, LinkedIn and X versions."
• Make an image editable (needs the free IMG.LY sign-in) — "Split this flat product photo into layers, put the product on our brand background and make it editable."
• Restyle an existing PDF — "Import this datasheet.pdf as an editable design, restyle it with our brand kit, and export A4 and web versions."
• Generate many from a CSV — "One speaker card per row in speakers.csv, same template, all editable."
• Prepare for print — "Turn this flyer into an A4 print PDF with 3 mm bleed and CMYK."
• Update an existing design — "Open last year's flyer.psd, swap the date and venue, export again."
• Localize a design — "Translate this poster into German and re-fit the layout so nothing overflows."
• Make a short video (generated music and voiceover need the free IMG.LY sign-in) — "Turn this poster into a 15-second vertical reel: animate the headline in, cut between the three product shots, and put a music bed and a voiceover under it."
• Create a launch graphic — "Make the v2.0 launch graphic with our logo and brand colors, in X, LinkedIn and OG-image sizes."
• Create App Store graphics — "Make the App Store screenshots and the Play Store feature graphic from these five screen captures, on-brand, all sizes."

How it works

Three layers, one product:

• The plugin — skills, slash commands, and an embedded design handbook your agent draws on to design well (brand, localize, resize, and quality-check its own output). This is the piece you install.
• The MCP server (@imgly/codesign-mcp) — exposes the design tools (edit, preview, export, list, history, …) over MCP, driven by tool calls from any agent host.
• The CE.SDK CreativeEngine — IMG.LY's real, headless design engine that does the actual layout, rendering, and export.

Licensing

This repository — the Claude Code and Codex plugins, marketplace manifests, skills and documentation — is released under the MIT License. The CoDesign engine itself, distributed as the npm package @imgly/codesign-mcp, is proprietary software from IMG.LY and free to use locally. The full terms ship inside the package as LICENSE.md.

Why a real engine matters

Every other design agent draws on a web canvas — a quick fix that breaks on the hard problems. CoDesign commands a production engine matured over years across print, video, and social:

• True print & color fidelity — CMYK, bleed, and ICC profiles, not just RGB screen output.
• Deterministic output — renders identically everywhere, independent of browser or config.
• Native performance — a purpose-built engine that stays fast at scale and under heavy assets.
• Full compatibility — imports InDesign, PSD, PowerPoint (PPTX), PDF, and Lottie; exports print-ready PDF, image, video, and HTML.

Requirements & known limitations

Read this first — the failure modes below are silent.

• Node.js ≥ 22.15 is required and is not provided. The server runs on your system Node. With no Node (or Node < 22.15) on PATH, the host reports the server as failed with no useful reason — typically local: 0 and MCP error -32000. Install Node 22.15+ first: https://nodejs.org.
• Pin @0.5.1 — every recipe names that exact version on purpose. The plugin ships the skills that version was built with, and a bare or dist-tagged npx would pair them with a different server. Each release republishes this repo with a new pin — update the plugin (or your recipe) to move forward.
• Windows is not supported under bare npx. Hosts that spawn npx directly hit spawn npx ENOENT (anthropics/claude-code#58510). Use WSL for now; a native Windows launcher is coming.

Install

Claude Code

Install the plugin from the marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add imgly/codesign
claude plugin install codesign@imgly-codesign

Or add the MCP server directly, without the plugin:

claude mcp add codesign -- npx -y @imgly/[email protected] stdio

Codex

Install the plugin from the marketplace:

codex plugin marketplace add imgly/codesign
codex plugin add codesign@imgly-codesign

Or add the MCP server directly, without the plugin:

codex mcp add codesign -- npx -y @imgly/[email protected] stdio

Antigravity CLI

Clone the repo and install the plugin folder:

git clone https://github.com/imgly/codesign
agy plugin install ./codesign/plugins/codesign

Or add the MCP server directly, without the plugin:

agy mcp add codesign -- npx -y @imgly/[email protected] stdio

Gemini CLI

Gemini CLI now serves Gemini Code Assist Standard/Enterprise and API-key accounts; on a personal Google account, use Antigravity CLI above.

Install as an extension straight from the public repo:

gemini extensions install https://github.com/imgly/codesign

Or add the server manually to ~/.gemini/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codesign": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@imgly/[email protected]",
        "stdio"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Other MCP hosts

Every other host spawns the same stdio server — only the config file and the top-level key differ. Add this block to the host’s MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codesign": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@imgly/[email protected]",
        "stdio"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Host	Config file	Note
Cursor	.cursor/mcp.json	as-is
Windsurf	~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json	as-is
VS Code	.vscode/mcp.json	use the key servers instead of mcpServers
Zed	settings.json	use the context_servers shape below

VS Code (servers key):

{
  "servers": {
    "codesign": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@imgly/[email protected]",
        "stdio"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Zed (context_servers):

{
  "context_servers": {
    "codesign": {
      "command": {
        "path": "npx",
        "args": [
          "-y",
          "@imgly/[email protected]",
          "stdio"
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Beyond your machine

CoDesign runs free on your machine today. When you need more — always-on hosting, your own infrastructure (VPC / on-prem), or a fully bundled design agent that lives in the canvas — the same building block graduates by changing config, not vendors. No lock-in. Talk to us: [email protected].

Support

Questions or issues: [email protected]. This distribution is generated from IMG.LY's source repository.