15:53Jack Roberts · Tutorial
I Replaced Claude Design - 100% UNLIMITED
How an Apache-licensed local clone removes the weekly cap, unlocks every LLM, and lets you build client work without burning Anthropic credits.
May 1stThe argument in one line.
Claude AI Design's Design System approach — fed a Figma file, brand assets, and a conversion formula — produces a complete, editable ecommerce email in under ten minutes, replacing a workflow that previously required a dedicated design team.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- An ecommerce brand or email marketer spending hours briefing designers on every campaign email.
- A freelance email strategist or agency account manager who wants to cut design turnaround from days to minutes.
- Someone already using Claude for other marketing tasks who wants to know whether the design tool is mature enough to trust.
- An agency owner deciding whether to retrain existing staff on AI design or hire differently.
SKIP IF…
- You need pixel-perfect HTML-coded emails ready for Klaviyo export — this workflow produces visual designs, not coded templates.
- You work exclusively with enterprise brands that have locked brand guidelines and internal creative review cycles.
The full version, fast.
AI design tools have finally caught up with email marketing's complexity, and this video benchmarks the two leading options side-by-side. Claude's Design System workflow accepts Figma files, BrandFetch assets, and a written conversion formula as a single brief, then generates a near-complete email with an editable canvas in about ten minutes. ChatGPT generates faster but produces static images that require reprompting for every edit. The honest verdict: Claude is the better long-term system for agencies managing multiple brands; ChatGPT is a faster scratch-pad for simple one-off sends.
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00:00 – 01:06
01 · Cold open — the last holdout
Establishes that email design was the one bottleneck AI had not solved, introduces the three-criteria test: speed, quality, ease of use.
01:06 – 05:40
02 · Claude Method 1 — quick-prompt project
Creates a Claude Design project, uploads a brand website screenshot and three email inspiration images from Milled.com, answers Claude's clarifying questions (audience, variations, modules, headline).
05:40 – 07:37
03 · Method 1 output review
Reviews Claude's three email variations, demonstrates the editable canvas (color change, section deletion, draw-to-annotate), honest about it being a strong foundation rather than the final asset.
07:37 – 11:06
04 · Claude Method 2 — Design System
Builds a persistent design system: uploads Figma file of past designs, BrandFetch brand assets, product images, brand story, and a written conversion formula brief.
11:06 – 12:53
05 · Design System output
Reviews the finished email: headline, logo, subscribe-and-save CTA, comparison infographic, benefits section. Declares it export-ready with minimal editing.
12:53 – 15:06
06 · ChatGPT comparison
Switches to ChatGPT image generation using the same prompt and inspiration references. Notes faster generation (~4 min) and high-quality hero visuals, but limited editability.
15:06 – 17:08
07 · ChatGPT editing demo + verdict
Demonstrates ChatGPT's area-select editing for a headline change. Concludes Claude wins on editability and long-term trajectory; ChatGPT wins on speed for simple sends.
17:08 – 17:38
08 · Agency positioning + CTA
Argues agencies are more valuable now as cross-brand data holders and AI directors. Pitches agency services to ecommerce brands doing $50K+/month.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Email design was the last marketing workflow where AI consistently underperformed human designers — that changed in mid-2026.
- Uploading a Figma file into Claude's Design System gives the AI persistent brand memory, so every future email pulls from the same visual grammar.
- Vague prompts work better than precise ones in Claude Design — the tool asks clarifying questions and builds a richer brief than most humans write upfront.
- ChatGPT generates email images in roughly 4 minutes; Claude's Design System takes roughly 10 minutes and produces an editable canvas, not a flat image.
- The ability to click a section and move it is worth more than any prompt-based repositioning workflow — editability is the core Claude advantage.
- BrandFetch gives free access to a brand's logo, color palette, and assets in seconds — it is the fastest way to feed a Design System brief.
- The worst output AI produces today is better than the best brief a junior designer can interpret without references.
- Agencies are more valuable now, not less — they hold cross-brand performance data that a single brand's AI prompt cannot replicate.
- Generating a hero visual in ChatGPT and importing it into Claude Design as inspiration is a legitimate hybrid workflow.
- The shift is not from teams to AI — it is from teams that produce to teams that direct AI and interpret its output.
Two Claude workflows, one clear winner for agencies.
WHAT TO LEARN
The Design System approach is slower to set up but produces an editable, brand-consistent email — the quick-prompt method is faster but produces a draft that still needs a designer.
- Uploading a Figma file into Claude's Design System gives the AI persistent brand memory, so you never have to re-brief the same visual guidelines twice.
- Feeding Claude a written conversion formula — hero, headline, CTA, comparison chart, benefits, final CTA — is the difference between a generic output and a campaign-ready email.
- BrandFetch collapses the asset-gathering step from hours to minutes; it is the fastest legitimate way to build a brand brief for any client.
- ChatGPT generates hero visuals faster and at higher image quality; the practical workflow is to generate the visual there, then import it into Claude as a reference image.
- The editability gap matters more than the speed gap: reprompting an AI for every layout change takes longer than clicking and dragging in an editable canvas.
- The agency value proposition has shifted from design production to AI direction and cross-brand data — knowing which headlines have performed across 100 brands is something a single brand's AI prompt cannot replicate.
- Vague initial briefs with Claude Design outperform detailed ones because the clarifying-question loop forces specificity without the human needing to anticipate every design variable upfront.
Terms worth knowing.
- Design System (Claude)
- A persistent brand profile inside Claude AI Design that stores fonts, logos, Figma frames, and brand guidelines so every new email brief can reference them without re-uploading assets.
- BrandFetch
- A website that aggregates publicly available brand assets — logos, color palettes, typography — for any registered company, downloadable in seconds.
- Milled.com
- An email marketing archive that collects real promotional emails from hundreds of brands, used by marketers as a swipe file for design inspiration.
- Subscribe and save
- An ecommerce offer structure where customers get a recurring discount in exchange for committing to automatic repeat purchases, common in consumables like supplements.
- High fidelity (Claude Design)
- A project mode in Claude AI Design that renders designs with full visual polish rather than wireframe-level placeholders, suitable for client-ready output.
Things they pointed at.
02:23productLiquid IV
Lines you could clip.
07:36
“This is the worst it's ever gonna be.”
11:40
“In 2026, you no longer need a design team.”
16:10
“Agencies are becoming way more necessary right now because they can pull from multiple industries, multiple data points.”
14:10
“It is way easier to be able to click on a section, move it up and down, than pre-prompt on hey, move this to the right, move this to the left.”
Word for word.
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00:00Over the last two weeks, we've had the biggest AI updates in terms of design that we've ever had in the history. And what used to take us about an hour to do a design now takes upwards of maybe ten minutes maximum. And this has been a case for multiple ad creatives and creators in general.
00:15But what hasn't been true for is email design. This has consistently been one of the bottlenecks for agencies and ecommerce brands is needing these designers to come in and create these massive emails because AI wasn't proficient yet until now. So what I wanna do is I wanna test whether Chatuchi B.
00:29T. Or Claude is the better use case for email design as we stand right now so that you know which ones to spend your time getting proficient in and which one is gonna save you the most amount of time with the highest quality output. So what I'm gonna rate this on is number one, speed of delivery.
00:44Number two, accuracy and quality of delivery, which means that the design overall. And then number three, which one is the easiest use case for you to use continuously? I'm gonna rank it on that so that you know exactly which one to put your time into.
00:56So let me jump into it. Alright. So first thing is I wanna show you Claude, and I wanna show you the two different options that you have.
01:03So on Claude, you have two options. You can just go straight to designs, and you can create a project for a specific design.
01:10So let's just say that we are doing a design for Nine project. Right?
01:15So we're just gonna name it. And what we're gonna choose is high fidelity, and we can go to create.
01:20And now this is gonna work the same way that you use Claude in general. You're gonna basically use prompts. You're gonna give it references, and you're gonna go from there.
01:27And you can also start with a sketch and show you how or show it how you want the design to be done. So the best way to do this is we're gonna go to Grune's website, and we are also gonna go to Melt.
01:39Right? And so what we wanna do is we wanna find some brand structures and emails so that we can just basically steal it. Right?
01:46So let's go verify. And this is Grun's website. So what we wanna do is I'm gonna personally take a picture, a screenshot of their entire website so we can understand the branding, and I'm gonna tell it exactly who we're doing the design for.
01:59So give it a second. It's gonna download this entire screenshot. We're gonna save this, and we're gonna go back to our project.
02:06And what I'm gonna do is give it a brief. So I'm gonna say I am doing doing a email design for grooms dot com.
02:14I have attached their website for branding and color inspiration.
02:23Perfect. And what I'm gonna do is just copy paste the link. Let me go over here.
02:33Alright. Perfect. So while this loads, I am gonna take a look at some brands that I really like the designs of.
02:40Right? So let's just take a look. Liquid IV is the first one, and I just use milk.com.
02:44It has all the brands that I personally follow for email design. So I like the structure. I think this is a decent email, so I'm gonna save this.
02:52And what I'm gonna do is I am maybe gonna go to this one. This one's decent. I quite like this as well.
03:01And then let's go to Ring Pop Cherry. Cool. So we're gonna download this one as well.
03:07So I like to get three or four references and then give it an inspo.
03:13Right. Perfect. And so I'm gonna just upload this, and then it will ask me probably some questions just for clarification.
03:21So let me upload that. And then once this is done uploading and it takes all that information, I am then gonna start logging these designs.
03:29So let's go here. Perfect. Gonna attach that.
03:34Right. So we're gonna take three different designs, and you can see that it's gonna ask me questions.
03:40So I like this because I do like to be vague so they can ask me a bunch of questions, and I can answer for it. So let me go and answer some of these.
03:49This is gonna be a product launch or a new flavor. It's gonna be to, let's just say, existing customers. We wanna make it a subscribe and save email.
04:01We want it to be punchy and playful like their websites? How many design variations? I'm gonna keep it to three variations.
04:09What should the variations explore? So let's do different layout structures, email length.
04:20Let's keep it medium. Which models to include? Products, chart, ingredient, highlights, and we want it to be benefits.
04:33Alright. Imagery. And we create product packaging in CSV.
04:38Perfect. Any specific product or headline? So let's just give it a little bit of brief so it's not let's just do this.
04:48Uh, finally, the vitamin that kit the kids want kids want equals headline, and then I can give it a bunch of different information.
04:57I'm purposely just gonna keep it pretty vague, and we wanna make sure that it is table based.
05:06Let's just make it modern only. Would be most useful.
05:13Let's just do that. Alright. Cool.
05:16And what we wanna do is continue. Cool. So I like to personally, like I said, just keep things super, super vague so they can go ahead and generate something for me.
05:25So what I'm gonna do is use these as inspo. What I'm do is wait for it to give me an output, and then I'm gonna probably give it this input just to go and change some things.
05:38So I'm gonna pause until it actually gives me that output just to save you a little bit of time. Alright. So it just spat out everything without meaning to give any edits.
05:47All I did was give it a very brief idea of who I'm generating for, gave it a screenshot of the website, and then told it what I want the headline to be. And above that, it just asked me some questions, and this is the output. In my opinion, this is pretty decent.
05:59Usually, you need a designer to go ahead and ideate on all of this and then put these, you know, functions together. And so what I like is it is also a really great foundation to send to a design team instead of them trying to ideate and understand what you exactly mean. And what we can go ahead and do is at the top here, we can actually go ahead and edit.
06:18So we can go here. We can choose what we wanna edit specifically. So let's just say, finally, we wanna change to, um, you know, we wanna change the color on this for whatever reason.
06:27And so we can change it to that. Right? So instead of you having to give edits, brief edits, you know, go back and forth, you can actually go change everything yourself.
06:36And even this, can just simply delete entirely. Now, obviously, I haven't given it product images, you can easily go ahead and do that. And so what we can do is we can go to their website.
06:45We'll just kind of take an image that we like and remove the background and then throw it in here. So it's a pretty good starting point. You can also go ahead and draw and you can say, you know, this area.
06:54So let's just say we want this this, and we can easily give a brief.
07:00And we can say, hey. Change this blah blah blah, whatever you want, but it's pretty straightforward. Keep in mind, I have not gone ahead and added these as inspo.
07:10So this is an optional step, and I'll just show you what it can look like if you do throw this in, um, and then give it maybe a product image or something. Alright. So really not so bad.
07:22Of course, it's not our preference. It's not the highest converting emails you can get. But if you're a brand that doesn't have a team available or, you know, considering that this is just a first batch with very minimal input and you can change so much more to this, this is a pretty good strong start.
07:37Considering that it's editable, considering that you can just do so much with this and keep giving it prompts to get closer, This is a great starting point for you to be able to do high quality designs, especially since this is the worst it's ever gonna be. So that concludes the first way to do it on Claude. I'm just gonna jump to the second way and probably my favorite way.
07:56We are back at claw.ai/design, and what we're gonna do is instead of using this that we used last time, we're gonna click on design systems, and we're gonna click on create system. Right?
08:06So it's gonna take us to the screen, and this is where we're gonna create a bunch of information about the brand specifically. Specifically. And what I really like about this is we can now upload a Figma file.
08:16We can add fonts, logos, and assets so we can continuously pull from it. So I'm gonna gather all of this, and I'm gonna upload it, and then I'll update you when that is done. Alright.
08:26So I have just given it a full brief. And what I've done is I just went to Grin's website. I went to their story page, and I downloaded a bunch of the information.
08:33So what their mission is, who they are, what they do, blah blah blah. Then what I did most importantly is I uploaded a Figma file of some of our downloads or designs for another brand that we work with. So take a look at this.
08:45Super simple designs that the owner likes, and this can work really well for Groen's because we don't wanna overcomplicate the process since it is a little bit more in its infancy. So we just downloaded this as a local file on Figma, which you can go over here. You just go to file, export, and then you save it as a local file.
09:01What you can then do is upload that Figma file. It's gonna pull all those frames. And then I went and found this website called BrandFetch, and I just downloaded all of the info and, you know, basically assets from Grooens.
09:15And that is what I've uploaded over here as well as finding a few of their product images with no transparent background and uploaded those as well. So what we're gonna go ahead and do is I've given information about all of that, and I'm gonna go to continue generation. And it is gonna say that it will take a few minutes to create the design system, so I'm gonna pause and come back once this is done.
09:37Alright. So this is crazy. Take a look at this, and this is why this system is my preference.
09:41So with all of the context that I gave it as well as the references as well as a little bit more of an added on brief, so you can see here I just gave it a bit of an idea of what formula we like to use, and you can pause the video and copy paste this brief as well. Um, I just basically gave it a little bit more information to make sure sure that it does what I need.
10:00And it took a little bit of time, took a little bit longer than five minutes. But with that being said, take a look at this. Right?
10:06It's generated a full email, and I can very easily just go ahead and quite frankly, like, copy paste this entire thing into my marketing.
10:16So it's got this little headline with subscribe and save. It's got their logo up there. Um, keep in mind, I can make changes to this.
10:22This is, like, the perfect email. It's got a perfect button over here. It's got the headline that I wanted and even highlights it, add some, like, design psychology be based on the references I gave it.
10:34Generated this image, gave it this kind of line over here as well as code to use, an infographic that I think is to the t exactly what I need as well as this infographic and then another CTA. So based on the formula that we use for high converting emails, this nails it.
10:49This is a complete email that you can literally go export, put it into your back end, and it took maybe ten minutes maximum to generate this maximum output that does everything you need. All I did was I gave it a little bit of detail. I gave it the product image to use, and then I broke broke down exactly what formula we use for high converting emails.
11:08I gave it those references, and voila, everything is done. So this is the perfect way to build an email in my opinion. In 2026, you no longer need a design team.
11:18Everything works perfectly. So if we go navigate, you know, we can go ahead and find this email. And now we can just go here and we can edit it as we need.
11:28Like, this is crazy. I am terrified for design teams because this is changing everything about it. So this is how to build an email with Clore Design.
11:38Now let's see what the outcome will be with ChattyBT. Right. So I'm just gonna use the search ChattyBT instead of the desktop one, and what I'm gonna do is I am gonna create an image.
11:48So I'm clicking on create an image, and I'm basically gonna steal the prompt that I used in the previous one. So, again, you can pause and basically copy paste it. But I'm gonna steal the prompt, and then I'm gonna generate it that way.
11:59First, though, I do wanna make sure I'm choosing the correct aspect ratio. So I'm gonna choose story just because it's the closest to an email, and then I'll probably just go make an, um, go make edits. So this is the prompt that I copy pasted.
12:10Pasted. Uh, so create an email design for grunst.co using this image with this headline.
12:15So let me just go ahead and give it some content to use. So I wanna add this, which I just found online. You can check another brand, by the way, and just use that.
12:24And what I want do so let's use this first and or let's use the same image we used for the previous one. We wanna use this, and then I want to go ahead and just upload that for now. Take a look at the rest.
12:37So using the inspo designs from Liquid IV. So let me just go copy paste those, and I'm giving it the same formula.
12:45So, for example, the hero visual, um, follows formula for sign.
12:51The hero visual, blah blah blah, and then second section, CTA. Perfect.
12:58And so let me just go upload that, and then I will give you an update once it's complete. It is way faster than Claude, so I'll show you the final output once it's ready. Right.
13:08So take a look at this. ChatGeeBT does an incredible design as well, and this is a little bit more minimal without focusing too much on the formula for conversion, but this works just as well. If you wanna do a short send out to your audience with a very simple CTA and build out, this is probably the way to go.
13:24It is way quicker. It took me less than four minutes. The image generation for like a hero visual is ideal.
13:29Like, it's the highest quality. And so if you really wanted to, you could mix it up. You could generate a high visual quality visual with headline for on Chatuity and then upload it into Claude as the inspo.
13:42So you can use multiple AI platforms. But considering the brief that I gave it as well as the minimal edits needed, this is a really high quality output as well. So it's more preference based.
13:53What do you like the look of? What needs the least amount of input for you? And where are you constrained?
13:58Or where do you feel like you don't have as much freedom? The benefit of Claude is that everything is editable. To me, that is a nonnegotiable.
14:05You wanna be able to edit things easily instead of reprompting this over and over and over again. Granted, you can just easily go ahead and do that. Right?
14:12We can go select a specific area. So let's just go select the, um, the headline, and we wanna change this this to change the headline to a subscribe and save today only.
14:2952% off. Right?
14:31So we can easily go ahead and give it a very specific highlight area and it will only change that. So that's fine. But for me, it is way easier to be able to click on a section, move it up and down, then pre prompt on, hey, move this to the right, move this to the left, make it this, make it that.
14:45That is a little bit more difficult. And the continuation of design isn't as clean as Claude in my opinion. I also think that Claude is continuously and actively going to overtake Chatuchu Biti by a mile.
14:58It already has an all other facets with its functionality. But in terms of design, I think they're pretty equal right now, especially Chatuchuwiti being slightly ahead in terms of not needing as much output, not as many credits, and being a little bit easily accessible for anyone to just quickly prompt it than building a system.
15:14But you can see how it quickly went ahead and made this change without editing anything else. It is super quick. The outcome, the output is super quick.
15:22So it's really up to you as the user. But I think all in all, AI is showing us this massive highlight where we don't need design teams anymore and we specifically don't need these massive teams to put emails together. It's shifting, and this is what we know within our agency.
15:35It is shifting from you as an ecommerce brand or you as an agency needing a full design team and full strategist to making sure that those people know how to use AI, interpret information, and create outputs based on that information. So would this email be any use if you're targeting the wrong people?
15:52Probably not. And that's why you need an expert team to go and do this. And is it completely fluent enough that it can replace an entire team right now?
16:00Absolutely not. Will it happen in a few months? Inevitably.
16:03There is no question about it. So the role that your agency should be playing and that we play for our clients is we are the efficient system. We're building the systems for them.
16:13They should not and you internally should not have to think about all of this. You already have so many outputs. And so what we do for our clients is we're strategically thinking of systems that will make things more efficient for our clients.
16:23We're using all of the access of hundreds of brands that we work with and pulling data from all of them to understand exactly what works, what headlines have performed best, etcetera, etcetera. So we have a data point that we can pull from. So if anything, agencies are becoming way more necessary right now because they can pull from multiple industries, multiple data points, whereas you only have your brand to go off of in your back end.
16:46So the agency shift is happening, and the need for output is changing. You can now output much faster, and there's way less excuses for things being delayed, which is great for you as an ecommerce brand. But at the end of the day, do you still need an agency or someone to come and manage us?
17:02Definitely. Who's gonna take the time to do these briefs and understand the formula to create a system around it and know what changes to make? It still needs human input.
17:10But this is as close as we've gotten to modern day efficiency around email design that we've ever had in history. So pay attention. I'm gonna keep doing updates as they get updates as well and as they become more proficient.
17:22But with that being said, if you wanna work with an agency that can do all of this for you, then go down below, book in a call. Would love to work with your ecommerce brand if you're doing more than $50,000 per month.
17:33Otherwise, I'll see you in the next video. I'm gonna keep pushing out these updates, so pay attention.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Email design was the last real holdout. Ad creatives, landing pages, social assets — AI had cracked all of them. But the brief-to-finished-email workflow still needed a designer in the room. This video tests whether that finally changed, running Claude AI Design and ChatGPT through the same real-brand brief to find out which one you should actually build your workflow around.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:30list
Three-criteria AI tool evaluation
- Speed of delivery
- Accuracy and quality of output
- Ease of continuous use
The framework used to judge Claude vs ChatGPT — deliberately audience-focused rather than technical.
Steal forAny AI tool comparison video or client proposal where you need an objective-looking scorecard
08:00model
Email conversion formula structure
- Hero visual
- Headline
- Subscribe/save CTA
- Comparison infographic
- Benefits section
- Final CTA
The conversion-optimized email structure the host inputs as a brief to Claude's Design System. Demonstrated visually in the output.
Steal forBuilding a Claude Design System brief for any ecommerce email campaign
14:00concept
Hybrid AI workflow
Generate the high-quality hero visual in ChatGPT, import it into Claude Design as inspiration, build the full editable email in Claude. Gets the best of both tools.
Steal forAgency workflow when client needs photorealistic hero imagery plus a fully editable email layout
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
17:08product
“If you wanna work with an agency that can do all of this for you, then go down below, book in a call. Would love to work with your ecommerce brand if you're doing more than $50,000 per month.”
Gated by revenue threshold ($50K/month) which simultaneously qualifies leads and makes the offer feel exclusive. Delivered conversationally, not as a hard close.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
Visual structure at a glance.
