Powerful Things to Install in Claude Right Now

Originally shared as a carousel on @dailywebdesign, original carousel by @avatarist.ai. Expanded with specific tools, setup guidance, and designer-focused use cases.

Claude (by Anthropic) is one of the most capable AI assistants for design and development work, but most people use it at about 20% of its potential. The defaults are fine. The configured version is significantly better.

Here's what to set up.

Start with Claude Projects

Claude Projects let you give Claude persistent context: your design system documentation, your brand voice guide, your component naming conventions, your project brief. Once uploaded, Claude references this context in every conversation within the project, you stop repeating yourself.

For designers, upload:

• Your design system documentation (colors, typography, spacing)
• Brand voice and tone guidelines
• Current project brief and constraints
• Any technical requirements from your engineering team

MCP Tools: Claude's biggest power-up

Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets Claude connect to external tools and data sources. With the right MCP servers installed, Claude can:

Figma MCP . Read your actual Figma file content. Claude can analyze your component structure, suggest improvements, and generate code that matches your existing design system.

Browser MCP . Claude can browse websites and extract information. Useful for competitive analysis: "go to linear.app and describe how their onboarding flow works."

File system MCP . Claude can read and write files on your local machine directly.

To install MCP tools, you need Claude Desktop (Mac/Windows). Settings → Developer → MCP Servers.

Custom instructions: tell Claude who you are

Claude.ai lets you set custom instructions that apply to every conversation. For a designer, set:

You are helping a UI/UX designer.
Context: I work on B2B SaaS products, primarily mobile and web.
Preferences:
- Keep responses concise and actionable
- When I ask for copy, provide 2-3 variants
- When reviewing designs, reference WCAG AA standards
Tools I use: Figma, Framer, VS Code, Linear

The best prompts for design work

Claude excels at:

UX writing, "Write 3 variants of error message copy for a failed payment, keeping each under 15 words."

Design critique, "Review this user flow for potential friction points using Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics."

Accessibility review, "Review this color combination for WCAG AA compliance and suggest accessible alternatives."

Documentation, "Write component documentation for a button with states: default, hover, focus, active, disabled, loading."

Claude + Base44: the fastest way to ship

If you want to go from idea to working app even faster, Base44 combines AI generation with a full backend, you describe the product you want, and it builds the interface, database, and logic. Use Claude for planning and refinement, Base44 for building.

Once built, present your work with professional device mockups from NewForm Studio.

View the full carousel on Instagram →

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Credit: Original carousel by @avatarist.ai, follow them for more AI tools and workflow content.