Frontier AI lab | 5,000 employees
Frontier AI lab | 5,000 employees
Frontier AI lab | 5,000 employees
summary
How should design operate when building code isn't the bottleneck?
At Anthropic, Claude writes most of the code. As engineering accelerates, design is evolving alongside it.
Features that once took weeks to build can now ship in days, creating what Head of Product Design Joel Lewenstein calls a "timescale compression" of software development. But design hasn't accelerated at the same pace. As implementation becomes cheaper and faster, exploration, decision-making, and refinement increasingly determine how quickly products move forward.
At Anthropic, the response has been to make designers builders. Every designer ships code in their first week, and they're some of the heaviest users of Claude, often building internal tools to solve their own problems. Because teams own and evolve their tooling, workflows stay flexible and can adapt as needs change, surfacing directions that wouldn’t emerge from fixed processes.
As implementation becomes abundant, the designer’s time shifts away from producing artifacts and toward choosing directions, exercising judgment, and pushing work through the final stretch of quality and polish. The constraint is no longer getting things built—it’s deciding what’s worth building, and shaping it into something people actually want to use.
summary
How should design operate when building code isn't the bottleneck?
At Anthropic, Claude writes most of the code. As engineering accelerates, design is evolving alongside it.
Features that once took weeks to build can now ship in days, creating what Head of Product Design Joel Lewenstein calls a "timescale compression" of software development. But design hasn't accelerated at the same pace. As implementation becomes cheaper and faster, exploration, decision-making, and refinement increasingly determine how quickly products move forward.
At Anthropic, the response has been to make designers builders. Every designer ships code in their first week, and they're some of the heaviest users of Claude, often building internal tools to solve their own problems. Because teams own and evolve their tooling, workflows stay flexible and can adapt as needs change, surfacing directions that wouldn’t emerge from fixed processes.
As implementation becomes abundant, the designer’s time shifts away from producing artifacts and toward choosing directions, exercising judgment, and pushing work through the final stretch of quality and polish. The constraint is no longer getting things built—it’s deciding what’s worth building, and shaping it into something people actually want to use.
summary
How should design operate when building code isn't the bottleneck?
At Anthropic, Claude writes most of the code. As engineering accelerates, design is evolving alongside it.
Features that once took weeks to build can now ship in days, creating what Head of Product Design Joel Lewenstein calls a "timescale compression" of software development. But design hasn't accelerated at the same pace. As implementation becomes cheaper and faster, exploration, decision-making, and refinement increasingly determine how quickly products move forward.
At Anthropic, the response has been to make designers builders. Every designer ships code in their first week, and they're some of the heaviest users of Claude, often building internal tools to solve their own problems. Because teams own and evolve their tooling, workflows stay flexible and can adapt as needs change, surfacing directions that wouldn’t emerge from fixed processes.
As implementation becomes abundant, the designer’s time shifts away from producing artifacts and toward choosing directions, exercising judgment, and pushing work through the final stretch of quality and polish. The constraint is no longer getting things built—it’s deciding what’s worth building, and shaping it into something people actually want to use.
We can make all the software in the world, and yet my phone holds only 16 apps and my day only has 18 waking hours. That's what design has always done and always will: not just can we make it, but is this worth making at all?
Joel Lewenstein
HEAD OF PRODUCT DESIGN, ANTHROPIC
We can make all the software in the world, and yet my phone holds only 16 apps and my day only has 18 waking hours. That's what design has always done and always will: not just can we make it, but is this worth making at all?
Joel Lewenstein
HEAD OF PRODUCT DESIGN, ANTHROPIC
We can make all the software in the world, and yet my phone holds only 16 apps and my day only has 18 waking hours. That's what design has always done and always will: not just can we make it, but is this worth making at all?
Joel Lewenstein
HEAD OF PRODUCT DESIGN, ANTHROPIC
KEY INSIGHTS
What we learned
01
The velocity gap between eng and design is widening
AI has compressed the time required to build software. Features that once took weeks can now ship in days, but design hasn't accelerated at the same rate. The result is a reversal of a long-standing dynamic: implementation is often no longer the bottleneck. The challenge, increasingly, is: how can design keep pace with engineering's new speed?
02
Designers as toolmakers
Rather than relying exclusively on off-the-shelf products, many designers at Anthropic build their own tools. Security and privacy requirements are one reason, but the bigger benefit is that the team can adapt the tools to their workflows, adding capabilities they wouldn't have anticipated upfront. They even have an internal marketplace of bespoke design tools, many spun up in an afternoon.
03
Code as the clay
Every designer ships code in their first week, and designers are among the company's heaviest users of Claude. Working directly in code shortens feedback loops, reduces handoffs, and makes it easier to explore ideas at the pace modern product teams increasingly expect.
04
Automate to protect
The team builds agents to handle reviews, workflows, and other repetitive tasks. Rather than replacing expertise, automation is being used to preserve it—eliminating repetitive tasks so specialists can spend more time on the work where they create the most value.
KEY INSIGHTS
What we learned
01
The velocity gap between eng and design is widening
AI has compressed the time required to build software. Features that once took weeks can now ship in days, but design hasn't accelerated at the same rate. The result is a reversal of a long-standing dynamic: implementation is often no longer the bottleneck. The challenge, increasingly, is: how can design keep pace with engineering's new speed?
02
Designers as toolmakers
Rather than relying exclusively on off-the-shelf products, many designers at Anthropic build their own tools. Security and privacy requirements are one reason, but the bigger benefit is that the team can adapt the tools to their workflows, adding capabilities they wouldn't have anticipated upfront. They even have an internal marketplace of bespoke design tools, many spun up in an afternoon.
03
Code as the clay
Every designer ships code in their first week, and designers are among the company's heaviest users of Claude. Working directly in code shortens feedback loops, reduces handoffs, and makes it easier to explore ideas at the pace modern product teams increasingly expect.
04
Automate to protect
The team builds agents to handle reviews, workflows, and other repetitive tasks. Rather than replacing expertise, automation is being used to preserve it—eliminating repetitive tasks so specialists can spend more time on the work where they create the most value.
KEY INSIGHTS
What we learned
01
The velocity gap between eng and design is widening
AI has compressed the time required to build software. Features that once took weeks can now ship in days, but design hasn't accelerated at the same rate. The result is a reversal of a long-standing dynamic: implementation is often no longer the bottleneck. The challenge, increasingly, is: how can design keep pace with engineering's new speed?
02
Designers as toolmakers
Rather than relying exclusively on off-the-shelf products, many designers at Anthropic build their own tools. Security and privacy requirements are one reason, but the bigger benefit is that the team can adapt the tools to their workflows, adding capabilities they wouldn't have anticipated upfront. They even have an internal marketplace of bespoke design tools, many spun up in an afternoon.
03
Code as the clay
Every designer ships code in their first week, and designers are among the company's heaviest users of Claude. Working directly in code shortens feedback loops, reduces handoffs, and makes it easier to explore ideas at the pace modern product teams increasingly expect.
04
Automate to protect
The team builds agents to handle reviews, workflows, and other repetitive tasks. Rather than replacing expertise, automation is being used to preserve it—eliminating repetitive tasks so specialists can spend more time on the work where they create the most value.
in action
Omelette, prototyping in native code
NATE PARROTT, PRODUCT DESIGNER
Nate Parrott created an internal tool that uses Claude to generate interactive prototypes built with Anthropic's design system. Designers use it to explore features and interactions; educators, salespeople, and other non-designers use it to create visual artifacts they couldn't have made before. Prototypes can be shared with a link, and feedback flows directly back into Claude for iteration. The project ultimately became a precursor to Claude Design.
People who weren't traditionally designers are putting on their designer hats. They've been doing high-level design thinking but didn't have the skills to make something that looks like a design artifact. Now it's almost as if they were a designer all along.
Nate Parrott
Product designer, Anthropic
in action
Omelette, prototyping in native code
NATE PARROTT, PRODUCT DESIGNER
Nate Parrott created an internal tool that uses Claude to generate interactive prototypes built with Anthropic's design system. Designers use it to explore features and interactions; educators, salespeople, and other non-designers use it to create visual artifacts they couldn't have made before. Prototypes can be shared with a link, and feedback flows directly back into Claude for iteration. The project ultimately became a precursor to Claude Design.
People who weren't traditionally designers are putting on their designer hats. They've been doing high-level design thinking but didn't have the skills to make something that looks like a design artifact. Now it's almost as if they were a designer all along.
Nate Parrott
Product designer, Anthropic
in action
Omelette, prototyping in native code
NATE PARROTT, PRODUCT DESIGNER
Nate Parrott created an internal tool that uses Claude to generate interactive prototypes built with Anthropic's design system. Designers use it to explore features and interactions; educators, salespeople, and other non-designers use it to create visual artifacts they couldn't have made before. Prototypes can be shared with a link, and feedback flows directly back into Claude for iteration. The project ultimately became a precursor to Claude Design.
People who weren't traditionally designers are putting on their designer hats. They've been doing high-level design thinking but didn't have the skills to make something that looks like a design artifact. Now it's almost as if they were a designer all along.
Nate Parrott
Product designer, Anthropic
Claude Code, designing in production
Meaghan Choi, Product Designer
For many projects, the design process ends with a merged pull request rather than a Figma file. Meaghan Choi built a set of Claude Code skills (/prototype, /preview, /fresh) that let her generate working designs inside unfamiliar codebases in minutes, then hand the PR off to agents that carry it through review, CI, and merge.
The real superpower of coding comes when you're not just prototyping in a playground, but when you're actually pushing to production, because that's the end product your audience is going to see.
Meaghan Choi
Product designer, Anthropic
Claude Code, designing in production
Meaghan Choi, Product Designer
For many projects, the design process ends with a merged pull request rather than a Figma file. Meaghan Choi built a set of Claude Code skills (/prototype, /preview, /fresh) that let her generate working designs inside unfamiliar codebases in minutes, then hand the PR off to agents that carry it through review, CI, and merge.
The real superpower of coding comes when you're not just prototyping in a playground, but when you're actually pushing to production, because that's the end product your audience is going to see.
Meaghan Choi
Product designer, Anthropic
Claude Code, designing in production
Meaghan Choi, Product Designer
For many projects, the design process ends with a merged pull request rather than a Figma file. Meaghan Choi built a set of Claude Code skills (/prototype, /preview, /fresh) that let her generate working designs inside unfamiliar codebases in minutes, then hand the PR off to agents that carry it through review, CI, and merge.
The real superpower of coding comes when you're not just prototyping in a playground, but when you're actually pushing to production, because that's the end product your audience is going to see.
Meaghan Choi
Product designer, Anthropic
Clontent, guidelines as an active agent
Chelsea Larsson, Content Design
Clontent is a Slack-integrated content design agent built on Claude. Instead of asking teams to consult a style guide, it surfaces Anthropic’s guidelines directly in the workflow and can propose string changes through a pull request—reducing the path from review to shipped change to about fifteen minutes.
Our guidelines can now actively participate in the product development process without us being in the room.
Chelsea Larsson
Content Design, Anthropic
Clontent, guidelines as an active agent
Chelsea Larsson, Content Design
Clontent is a Slack-integrated content design agent built on Claude. Instead of asking teams to consult a style guide, it surfaces Anthropic’s guidelines directly in the workflow and can propose string changes through a pull request—reducing the path from review to shipped change to about fifteen minutes.
Our guidelines can now actively participate in the product development process without us being in the room.
Chelsea Larsson
Content Design, Anthropic
Clontent, guidelines as an active agent
Chelsea Larsson, Content Design
Clontent is a Slack-integrated content design agent built on Claude. Instead of asking teams to consult a style guide, it surfaces Anthropic’s guidelines directly in the workflow and can propose string changes through a pull request—reducing the path from review to shipped change to about fifteen minutes.
Our guidelines can now actively participate in the product development process without us being in the room.
Chelsea Larsson
Content Design, Anthropic
FEATURED ANTHROPIC TEAM MEMBERS
NAME
POSITION
Joel Lewenstein
Head of Product Design
Nate Parrott
Product Designer
Meaghan Choi
Product Designer
Chelsea Larsson
Content Design
Matt Gallivan
User Researcher
Kyle Turman
Product Designer
FEATURED ANTHROPIC TEAM MEMBERS
NAME
POSITION
Joel Lewenstein
Head of Product Design
Nate Parrott
Product Designer
Meaghan Choi
Product Designer
Chelsea Larsson
Content Design
Matt Gallivan
User Researcher
Kyle Turman
Product Designer
FEATURED ANTHROPIC TEAM MEMBERS
NAME
POSITION
Joel Lewenstein
Head of Product Design
Nate Parrott
Product Designer
Meaghan Choi
Product Designer
Chelsea Larsson
Content Design
Matt Gallivan
User Researcher
Kyle Turman
Product Designer
Join the team
Anthropic Design
Anthropic's design team is made up of product designers, content designers, user researchers, and design engineers shaping Claude, Claude Code, and Anthropic's product surfaces.
Join the team
Anthropic Design
Anthropic's design team is made up of product designers, content designers, user researchers, and design engineers shaping Claude, Claude Code, and Anthropic's product surfaces.
Join the team
Anthropic Design
Anthropic's design team is made up of product designers, content designers, user researchers, and design engineers shaping Claude, Claude Code, and Anthropic's product surfaces.
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