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There's always been a gap between what print designers do and what web designers are allowed to do. It mostly comes down to text. I have been completely obsessed with these beautiful Pretext demos, and have collected some of my favourites.
ICYMI: Pretext is a TypeScript library that measures and lays out text ~500x faster than browser reflow, no DOM involved. For graphic designers it means using text on the web with the same flexibility you get in print.
Have you explored Pretext yet? What are your favourite demos?
This is really cool! I had no idea these type of creations existed. Thanks for sharing!
I really love it! 😍
Web designers finally get the fun tools print designers have!
Making website words look like a real magazine is a total dream.
500x faster than browser reflow with no DOM? That's wild. Typography on the web has always been the weakest link — Pretext sounds like it's actually solving it 🤯
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
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One prompt is a gamble but a canvas is a workflow, which is why I run @floraai as a system.
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style matched prompts
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Same tool but a completely different output.
New video for @contra University
My solution is about closing the gap between design and code with designing real, fully working components.
I designed a Contra-inspired profile card in Paper, then built a workflow that turns it into real, working React components.
The workflow in 3 steps:
→ Creating a contra.com style guide inside Paper, then asking it to create a copy of the profile card. Then making some refinement using the canvas and the design tools (I even added some new functionalities to the card, e.g. the fun fact section)
→ Paper design → component spec. My Claude skill reads the Paper file, including component states and the written explanations you might attached to your design, and writes a structured markdown specification with a component tree and these specs: appearance, user interactions, states, required input data.
→ Spec → working components. A second Claude skill generates real React components in Storybook and verifies each one against the Paper design until it matches: typography, colors, spacing, states.
(Btw. Storybook is a living catalog of your product's UI components, where each one runs in the browser as a real, interactive preview, so designers can click through every state and variation exactly as users will experience it, without waiting for the full app to be built around it.)
If you don’t design something, someone else (an AI, a developer) will. (It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to be deliberate about what parts you want to outsource.)
With this workflow, you get to review and complete your design at two points:
→ first, when you get the detailed specification: you can take a quick look at it and fill in the gaps if needed
→ second, when you can play around with the live, fully coded components inside Storybook. You can also run tests to check e.g. whether the component is accessible or not.
With these two review steps built in, you can be sure that your design intent truly gets translated to code.
You can modify the spec, tweak the design in Paper, regenerate the components, and iterate until the result matches what you actually had in mind. No more redlining screenshots or re-explaining hover states in Slack.
Tools: Paper, Claude Code, Storybook, React.
MCP Servers: Paper, Storybook, Chrome DevTools
(Btw. I also created the slide deck inside Paper using Claude from VS Code)
I'll be open-sourcing both Claude skills and the full workflow in the coming days, so you can use it in your own projects and start closing the gap between design and code the same way. Stay tuned!
Thanks for the challenge @Stephen Haney @Contra HQ
Building a Zero-Touch Design Feedback Loop with Slack and the @Paper MCP
What if you never had to manually process a minor design revision again? As designers and developers, we easily waste 30% of our week fulfilling fast client requests—changing button colors, adjusting typography, or tweaking padding. I decided to completely automate this process.
In this project, I engineered an autonomous AI-driven workflow that physically alters native UI designs based on conversational Slack messages, proving the massive potential of the Paper MCP.
✨ The Power of the Paper MCP: Historically, AI agents have struggled to actually "see" or edit design files. By deploying the Paper MCP, I gave a raw Large Language Model the ability to programmatically traverse a 2D design canvas.
The Setup: I design the initial UI (like a Login Page) using Paper and post the screenshot to the client's Slack channel.
The Trigger: The client requests changes natively in Slack by mentioning a custom @DesignBot (e.g., "Make the login button green and change the title to 'Welcome'").
The Execution: Instead of guessing layout geometry, the AI uses the Paper MCP to dynamically query the canvas, isolate the precise target node, and duplicate the master to create a protected variant. It aligns the new design on the canvas grid and updates the styling properties natively.
The Delivery: The MCP server intercepts the final render state and pushes a flawlessly formatted screenshot right back into the Slack thread.
🛠️ Technical Stack Used:
Paper MCP: The absolute core of the project, enabling rigorous JSON-RPC access to native design layers, text bounds, and styling hooks.
Slack Bolt (Socket Mode): For threading logic, instant reaction processing, and conversational memory.
Agentic LLM Engine: Used native OpenAI tool-calling to map the complex MCP schemas directly into the AI’s brain so it never hallucinates commands.
The Result: Clients experience magical, instantaneous visual revisions directly inside their communication channels, while designers and developers win back hours of completely uninterrupted, deep-focus work.
Check out the video demo below to see the AI leverage Paper MCP to parse a layer tree and dynamically manipulate the UI!
This is the kind of workflow that quietly kills 30% of design busywork 👀
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