designesy-mcp
One-click install:
A read-only stdio MCP server exposing designesy.org's design-intelligence infrastructure as native agent tools.
Zero external dependencies. Pure Python stdlib. Implements the Model Context Protocol JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio.
Quick start (one command)
uvx designesy-mcp
That's it. uvx fetches the package from PyPI, creates an ephemeral environment, and launches the stdio MCP server. No virtualenv, no pip install, no git clone. The server is ready to speak JSON-RPC 2.0 on stdin/stdout immediately.
Don't have
uv? Install it once:curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh(macOS/Linux) orpowershell -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"(Windows). Or usepipx run designesy-mcpas an equivalent one-liner.
MCP client config
uvx (recommended — no install step)
{
"mcpServers": {
"designesy": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["designesy-mcp"]
}
}
}
pip install (traditional)
pip install designesy-mcp
{
"mcpServers": {
"designesy": {
"command": "designesy-mcp"
}
}
}
python -m (module form)
{
"mcpServers": {
"designesy": {
"command": "python",
"args": ["-m", "designesy_mcp_server"]
}
}
}
No arguments needed. The server speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdin/stdout.
Tools (17)
The server exposes 17 tools, all fetched live from https://www.designesy.org/:
Read-only discovery
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
designesy_catalog |
Get the 23-package catalog (versions, URLs, statuses) from /open.json |
designesy_contract |
Get the full design-system contract (tokens, motion, acoustic, takt, cadence, typography, components, verification, open tensions) — or a filtered section. The version travels in the response, so none is pinned here |
designesy_design_review |
Get the Design Review kit (8 dimensions, agent prompt, output format, verification checklist) |
designesy_skill_md |
Get the agent-skill-format export (SKILL.md) with behavioral rules, tokens, anti-patterns |
designesy_agent_json |
Get the agent discovery document (.well-known/agent.json) — identity, authority, ingest protocol |
designesy_llms_txt |
Get the short agent brief (/llms.txt) |
designesy_llms_full_txt |
Get the full agent brief (/llms-full.txt) with ingest protocol, all packages, paste-ready prompt |
Executable verification
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
designesy_score |
Run the 42-check contract verification against a live URL through the engine at https://www.designesy.org/api/score. Returns an overall score, a letter grade, and the check results (PASS/FAIL/WARN/SKIP/MANUAL). format selects the output: designesy (default) returns this tool's JSON (url, contract_version, summary, tokens_extracted, checks, note); canonical (review-findings.json schema) and google (@google/design.md JSON) return the engine's JSON unchanged; review returns the engine's markdown report unchanged (coverage by category, a findings table of the FAIL and WARN checks, and a verdict). scope (contract or universal) sets the scoring scope; omit it and the engine picks contract for designesy.org and universal for every other site. If the engine is unreachable, designesy falls back to a local offline subset of 26 checks with no scope modes, and the other three formats return an error. |
designesy_tokens_score |
Validate a design token file against the W3C Design Tokens Community Group (DTCG) 2025.10 format. 10 checks (t01–t10). |
designesy_a11y_score |
Get the WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility verification framework (11 checks, a01–a11) + a Playwright/axe-core script template for local execution. |
designesy_motion_score |
Validate a Lottie animation file against Lottie spec v1.0.1 + the Designesy 10 Non-Negotiable Motion Standards. 10 checks (m01–m10). |
Executable engines (new in v1.10.0)
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
designesy_drift_score |
12-check AI-drift radar — detects token fabrication, within-session drift, between-session amnesia, and silent breaking changes. |
designesy_readiness_score |
10-check AI readiness probe — tests for DTCG tokens, llms.txt, agent.json, MCP endpoint, DESIGN.md, sitemap, robots, OG meta. |
designesy_guardrails |
Generate a frozen build-contract bundle: DTCG tokens, Stylelint config, AGENTS.md rules, component contract, anti-patterns, DESIGN.md. |
designesy_monitor_score |
Continuous drift governance — 10 monitor checks with history deltas, trend slope, and email alerts via Resend. |
designesy_compare |
Diff two design systems from live URLs — 8-dimension structured diff (added, removed, renamed, value-changed, scale, contrast, structure, score). |
designesy_report |
Composite synthesis — fires score + drift + readiness in parallel, computes weighted composite grade. The most shareable surface. |
Resources (7)
The server also exposes 7 MCP resources (read-only URIs):
| URI | Content |
|---|---|
designesy://open |
Package catalog (JSON) |
designesy://contract |
Full design-system contract (JSON) |
designesy://kit/design-review |
Design Review kit (JSON) |
designesy://skill |
SKILL.md agent-skill export (Markdown) |
designesy://agent |
Agent discovery document (JSON) |
designesy://llms |
Short agent brief (text) |
designesy://llms-full |
Full agent brief (text) |
The 42-check verification engine
designesy_score runs 42 deterministic checks across 14 weighted categories:
| Category | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| cadence | 18 | Typography rhythm — line-height, font-synthesis, text-underline-position, skip-ink |
| accessibility | 15 | WCAG 2.2 primitives — reduced-motion, forced-colors, AI disclosure, focus-visible |
| semantic | 12 | Token architecture — :root custom properties, no raw hex, semantic naming |
| motion | 10 | Motion hygiene — duration tokens, easing tokens, reduced-motion blocks |
| tokens | 9 | DTCG 2025.10 conformance — $type, $value, $description, colorSpace |
| takt | 8 | Timing discipline — transition bands, animation hierarchy |
| copywriting | 8 | UX copy — button verb phrases, no trailing periods, descriptive link text, no ALL CAPS |
| poise | 7 | Composure — viewport overflow, scroll behavior, print styles |
| identity | 6 | Brand coherence — title, meta description, favicon, og tags |
| interaction | 6 | Interaction primitives — hover states, press feedback, disabled states |
| performance | 6 | Core Web Vitals readiness — preload, font-display, render-blocking |
| responsive | 3 | Responsive primitives — viewport meta, container queries |
| security | 5 | Security headers — CSP, X-Content-Type-Options, referrer policy |
| spec | 4 | Spec conformance — lang attr, charset, doctype |
No LLM. No roast. The same engine scores designesy.org itself, in public: its current score is on the leaderboard.
Standards positioning
DTCG 2025.10 — the spec went stable
The W3C Design Tokens Community Group published the spec's first stable version on Oct 28, 2025 — the Final Community Group Report, classified as a Candidate Recommendation and considered stable. 24+ organizations back it (Adobe, Google, Meta, Figma, Amazon, Microsoft, Shopify, Sketch, Framer). 84% of teams now use design tokens (zeroheight Design Systems Report 2025, up from 56% in 2024).
designesy_tokens_score validates against this stable spec. Every team adopting DTCG 2025.10 needs a validator — designesy is it.
Motion tokens — the spec's blind spot
The DTCG 2025.10 spec leaves motion tokens as a second-class citizen — there is no standard for motion token structure, reduced-motion markers, or animation accessibility. The 2026 State of Design Systems field report confirms this is the remaining friction point.
designesy_motion_score fills this gap. It validates Lottie files against the Lottie spec v1.0.1 AND the Designesy §16 Ten Non-Negotiable Motion Standards — the only validator that checks both structural well-formedness and accessibility (reduced-motion markers, no deprecated versions). It is the verification layer for the spec's known blind spot.
Contract vs. opinion
No competitor does contract-based deterministic scoring. Lighthouse is weighted heuristics. axe-core is rule violations. securityheaders.com is a single dimension. Designesy's 42-check contract-bound 0-100 score across 7 dimensions (tokens, motion, accessibility, cadence, takt, typography, copywriting) has no direct analog.
Caching
All responses are cached with a 5-minute TTL. The server only fetches public, machine-readable exports from designesy.org via HTTPS. It does not read local files, credentials, or source roots.
Safety
Read-only. This server never writes anywhere. It does not execute code, mutate files, or access credentials.
Provenance
All data is fetched live from:
https://www.designesy.org/open.jsonhttps://www.designesy.org/contracts/design-system.jsonhttps://www.designesy.org/kits/design-review.jsonhttps://www.designesy.org/contracts/skillhttps://www.designesy.org/.well-known/agent.jsonhttps://www.designesy.org/llms.txthttps://www.designesy.org/llms-full.txt
License
MIT
Links
- Homepage
- Agent Install — one-command
uvx designesy-mcp - Repository
- MCP Registry entry
- Changelog
- Design-system contract
- Leaderboard — 30-site public cohort, A–F histogram, weekly re-score
- Score badge — embeddable SVG badge for A/B-graded sites
- Live score API — JSON, no key, no login
- Methodology
Metadata
Release files for designesy-mcp 1.13.0
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| designesy_mcp-1.13.0.tar.gz | 51.3 kB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| designesy_mcp-1.13.0-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 105.2 kB
Release files / designesy_mcp-1.13.0.tar.gz
| Download URL | designesy_mcp-1.13.0.tar.gz |
|---|---|
| Size | 51.3 kB |
| Tags | Source |
|
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Yes |
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Release files / designesy_mcp-1.13.0-py3-none-any.whl
| Download URL | designesy_mcp-1.13.0-py3-none-any.whl |
|---|---|
| Size | 53.9 kB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
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Yes |
| Uploaded via |
twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.12.15
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