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, 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:

• "Design a 3-panel Instagram carousel announcing our launch, on-brand."
• "Resize this poster to A4 with print bleed and export a print-ready PDF."
• "Localize this flyer into German and re-fit the layout to the new text."
• "Generate five color variants of this template so I can pick one."

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.

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, 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 @latest — it's in every recipe on purpose. A bare, unpinned npx
  caches the package and goes stale; because each release carries a rolling
  30-day trial license, a stale copy eventually stops working.
• 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/codesign-mcp@latest 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/codesign-mcp@latest 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/codesign-mcp@latest 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/codesign-mcp@latest",
        "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/codesign-mcp@latest",
        "stdio"
      ]
    }
  }
}

VS Code (servers key):

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

Zed (context_servers):

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

Licensing

A 30-day CE.SDK trial license is bundled in the package, so the recipes above
work out of the box with zero configuration. To use your own CE.SDK license,
set CESDK_LICENSE in the server's environment — for example, add an env
block next to command/args:

{ "env": { "CESDK_LICENSE": "your-cesdk-node-license" } }

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; see LICENSE for terms.