# Onlook — The Cursor for Designers

Onlook is the visual editor designers use to shape the real product — not a prompt-generated prototype. Designers work on the real React components in their existing codebase, on an infinite canvas. AI helps. The code is the source of truth.

## Who this is for

Most AI tools turn prompts into one-off prototypes. Onlook is for designers — the ones who treat the design system as a product, the brand as a discipline, and the difference between "close enough" and "right" as the whole job. The audience is the people responsible for the system, the brand, and the experience that gets shipped.

## The problem

Designers got left behind when engineers got Claude Code and Cursor. Every design team is stuck in the same loop: design in Figma, hand off, wait for engineering, watch the implemented version drift from the design. AI tools helped engineers ship faster. The AI tools aimed at design assume a prompt-first workflow that doesn't fit designers who maintain a system and want to edit the actual product.

## What Onlook is

A visual editor for designers working in your existing codebase. Not a design tool that exports code. Not a prompt-to-prototype generator. A code tool with a visual interface, built around something designers don't get anywhere else: an infinite canvas of your real components, where you can see and shape the whole product at once instead of one screen at a time.

The canvas is the editor. The components on the canvas are the components in your repo. AI is how you make changes — describe what you want in natural language and the edit lands in code, not in a comp to hand off. The canvas reflects your real code as the source of truth.

This means:

- No second copy of your design system to maintain
- No design drift between your design and the live product
- No prompt-generated prototype that ignores your tokens
- No proprietary file format to learn or migrate away from
- Your code stays yours — there is no parallel platform holding it

## What Onlook is not

- Not a prompt-to-prototype generator
- Not a parallel-canvas design tool that drifts from a codebase
- Not a no-code website builder
- Not a mass-customization platform for end-users
- Not a design-to-code converter that generates standalone code outside your repo

## Who Onlook is for

**Design engineers and design technologists.** Hybrid practitioners who design and code already. They have been hacking around this gap. Onlook removes the friction they have been working around.

**Product designers and UI designers.** Designers who own the look and feel of a product. They want their work implemented faithfully without waiting on engineering for every visual change.

**Frontend engineers.** Engineers who care about code quality and component architecture. Onlook shifts visual iteration back to designers while the codebase stays the source of truth.

**Founders, design leaders, and agency principals.** Decision-makers who want their team to ship faster with the same headcount. Onlook makes a 3-person team feel like 10.

## How it works

1. Connect Onlook to your codebase. If you have Storybook set up, Onlook picks up your components immediately. If you do not, a one-click setup scaffolds it in about an hour.
2. Onlook opens an infinite canvas with your real components.
3. Designers compose and iterate on the canvas. AI is built into every interaction — generate, restyle, restructure with natural language.
4. The canvas stays in sync with the underlying code. Your team's git workflow, CI, and deployment pipeline stay exactly the way they are.

## Core differentiators

| Factor | Onlook | Alternatives |
|--------|--------|--------------|
| Who it's for | Designers and engineers who maintain a design system and care about craft | Anyone who wants a quick prototype from a prompt |
| Starting point | Your real components, on a canvas | A prompt that generates a new prototype |
| How designers work | Compose on an infinite canvas of real components, with AI as the editor | Type a prompt and accept what the AI generates |
| Source of truth | Code | A design file (Figma) or a proprietary platform (Webflow) |
| AI role | Assists design inside the codebase | Generates artifacts outside the codebase |
| Source format | Your real React components — no proprietary file format | A proprietary design file or platform-locked artifact |
| Ownership | Code-owned, your repo, no platform lock-in | Vendor lock-in; switching costs scale with adoption |
| Design system | Your real design tokens, defined in your code | A separate library that drifts |

## Proof points

- Y Combinator Winter 2025
- Built by a team that previously open-sourced a popular visual editor for designers


## Key links

- Main site: https://www.onlook.com
- Features: https://www.onlook.com/features
- FAQ: https://www.onlook.com/faq
- About: https://www.onlook.com/about