---
title: 'Why 40k Developers Abandoned Claude Design'
youtubeId: B3coWv2ZV68
summary: Better Stack walks through how Open Design works under the hood, sets it up locally, and stress-tests the output by redesigning a YouTube channel searcher with a non-Claude model.
date: 2026-05-15
category: Review
durationSeconds: 446
author: Better Stack
official: false
---

Better Stack breaks down the architecture choices that let Open Design run on whatever coding agent you already have installed — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, or DeepSeek — and benchmarks the result side-by-side with the original Claude Design output.

The walkthrough covers:

- How the local-first daemon swaps in different model providers without changing skills
- The 72 brand-grade design systems and how they shape generated UI
- A real redesign test: rebuilding a YouTube channel searcher front-end with a non-Claude model
- Where the output still falls behind Claude Design, and where it wins
