Claude skill · Design and art · Anthropic
Canvas design skill for Claude
Creates posters and other static visual designs as PNG or PDF, starting from a written design philosophy, with a bundled library of open-licence fonts.
- Command
- /canvas-design
- Licence
- Apache-2.0, copying allowed with attribution
- Folder
- 83 files, 5.3 MB
- Runs code
- No scripts
Overview
What it does
Claude first writes a design philosophy of four to six paragraphs, saved as a Markdown file, and then expresses it on a canvas with code. The instructions push for original, museum-quality work and explicitly against copying existing artists.
The folder carries about thirty open-licence font families in canvas-fonts/, most with their SIL Open Font Licence file alongside, so designs aren’t limited to system fonts. A multi-page option produces a set of related designs.
Triggers
When Claude uses it
- Requests for a poster, a piece of art, a design or another static visual piece.
Create beautiful visual art in .png and .pdf documents using design philosophy. You should use this skill when the user asks to create a poster, piece of art, design, or other static piece. Create original visual designs, never copying existing artists' work to avoid copyright violations.
What it needs
- A code environment that can draw a PNG or PDF (SKILL.md doesn’t name a library); the fonts are bundled.
Install
How to install it
Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skillsThe example-skills plugin installs 12 skills from this repository, including this one. Its skills are then namespaced, such as /example-skills:canvas-design.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/anthropics/skills.git
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r skills/skills/canvas-design ~/.claude/skills/That makes it a personal skill, available as /canvas-design in all your projects. Copy it into .claude/skills/ in a repository instead to share it with your team.
claude.ai and the Claude API
Zip the skill folder, then in claude.ai open Customize > Skills, choose + and Create skill, then Upload a skill. Code execution must be turned on.
from anthropic import Anthropic
from anthropic.lib import files_from_dir
client = Anthropic()
skill = client.skills.create(files=files_from_dir("canvas-design"))
print(skill.id) # use as a custom skill_id with the code execution toolChecks
SKILL.md validator results
Its SKILL.md (130 lines) run through our SKILL.md validator, with the folder’s file list, for both targets. These check the file’s format, not whether the skill works well.
Claude Code
0 errors, 0 warnings, 0 tips
claude.ai and the API
0 errors, 0 warnings, 1 tip
- tipThe Claude Help Center’s upload guide gives a 200-character description limit for claude.ai, though the platform docs say 1,024. Keep it under 200 if you’ll upload it there.
Folder
What’s in the folder
- LICENSE.txt11 KB
- SKILL.md12 KB
- canvas-fonts/81 files, 5.3 MB
SKILL.md sections
- DESIGN PHILOSOPHY CREATION
- THE CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING
- HOW TO GENERATE A VISUAL PHILOSOPHY
- PHILOSOPHY EXAMPLES
- ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES
- DEDUCING THE SUBTLE REFERENCE
- CANVAS CREATION
- FINAL STEP
- MULTI-PAGE OPTION
Source
Licence and source
- Published by Anthropic in anthropics/skills/skills/canvas-design, last changed 2026-04-20.
- Licence: Apache-2.0, copying allowed with attribution. Our copy of the SKILL.md is unmodified, served with its licence.
- Read from commit
dbd4588; write-up checked 2026-10-14. - Before installing, read the SKILL.md on GitHub. Anthropic advises using skills only from sources you trust (security considerations).
Related
More skills
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- Frontend designGuidance for distinctive web interfaces that don’t look like template defaults: grounding the design in its subject, then planning, building and self-critique.
- Slack GIF creatorMakes animated GIFs sized and compressed for Slack, with Python helpers for frames, easing and file-size checks.
- Theme factoryTen ready-made colour and font themes for slides, documents and web pages, plus a way to generate a new theme on request.
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