What getdesign.md does well
It is the largest public collection of DESIGN.md files, it is genuinely one command to install, and it publishes a State of DESIGN.md report alongside the catalogue. If you want to see how many different ways people write these files, or you specifically want a brief derived from a product you admire, it is the obvious place to look. It is maintained by the VoltAgent team, who also run the awesome-design-md list.
The structural difference
Both products install a DESIGN.md. The question worth asking is what else lands in the repository, because a design brief is one half of a design system and the tokens are the other.
| getdesign.md | Identity Forge | |
|---|---|---|
| The written brief | Yes: a DESIGN.md | Yes: a DESIGN.md |
| Semantic colour tokens | No token file. Values appear inside the brief as prose | 28 roles, light and dark, written into your theme |
| Where the values live | In the Markdown. Your stylesheet is unchanged | In your stylesheet. The Markdown references them |
| Framework exports | Markdown | CSS variables, Tailwind v3/v4 @theme, shadcn registry item, DTCG/W3C JSON |
| Origin of the design | Analysis of an existing product's observable patterns | An original kit, or generated from your brief |
| Agent integration | Install the file, agent reads it | MCP tools: search, match a palette, read the brief, apply the kit |
The second and third rows are the ones that determine what actually happens in your codebase. If the colour values exist only inside a Markdown file, the agent reads them and then writes them into components as literal values, because there is nothing else to reference. You end up with a documented design and an undocumented stylesheet, which is the situation semantic tokens exist to prevent.
A brief with values in prose and no token file gives the agent nothing to reference. It writes literals, and the stylesheet learns nothing.
This is not a criticism of the format. It is a consequence of what a catalogue entry can be. An analysis of somebody else's product cannot ship you their token file, because it does not have it.
What a brand-derived brief can and cannot carry
getdesign.md's entries are analyses of publicly observable patterns, and its brand pages say so directly, with non-affiliation notices. That framing is correct and worth taking at face value. The interesting question is what survives the derivation.
| Transfers? | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| Palette and type family | Yes | Directly observable from a rendered page |
| Spacing and radius values | Mostly | Observable, though which are systematic and which are one-offs is a judgement call |
| What the design refuses to do | Rarely | Absences are invisible to observation. You cannot see a shadow that was never used |
| Why a decision was made | No | Density that serves a power user all day is the wrong answer for a landing page, and the brief cannot know which you are |
The third row is the important one, and it applies to any derived brief regardless of who produces it. We sampled 299 published DESIGN.md files and found 76% contain no prohibitions of any kind: alongside 86% specifying colours as raw hex with no semantic role and 57% naming no distinctive motifs. Prohibitions are where a design's identity actually lives, and they are precisely what an outside-in analysis has the least access to.
That is the honest limit of copying any admired product's look, and we cover it at length in the Linear teardown: the palette is the least distinctive part of the system, and the constraints that make it work are the part that does not survive extraction.
A generated system, live
This is what "generate a complete system" means in practice: the free ambient-sage kit, rendered from its real tokens and fonts, the same payload the CLI writes into your repo:
Ambient Sage
Live renderRendered from the kit's actual tokens, fonts, and treatments
Typography
Plus Jakarta Sans
Color system
28 semantic roles, light + dark
Agent outputs
DESIGN.md, CSS, Tailwind, shadcn
npx shadcn add https://identityforge.io/r/ambient-sage.jsonAfter that command your globals.css holds 28 named roles in light and dark, and the DESIGN.md refers to them by name rather than restating hex values. That is the coupling that keeps the brief true: change a token and the brief is still accurate, because it never held a copy.
Which should you use?
- Choose getdesign.md if you want to study how DESIGN.md files are written across many products, or you specifically want a brief derived from a design you admire and are comfortable supplying the token layer yourself.
- Choose Identity Forge if you want an original system installed as working tokens plus a matching brief, with MCP, CLI and shadcn delivery and exports for whatever stack you use.
- They are not exclusive. Reading catalogue entries is a good way to calibrate how specific a brief should be. Just be aware that a brief without tokens leaves the stylesheet unchanged, so pair it with a real token layer either way.
Whichever you pick, run the same check afterwards: grep for literal hex values outside your token file. If the agent is writing them into components, the brief is not connected to anything and you have documentation rather than a system.
New to the format? Start with what a DESIGN.md is and how to generate one, then pick your tool from the pillar guide.
FAQ
What's the difference between Identity Forge and getdesign.md?
getdesign.md publishes DESIGN.md analyses of well-known products, installable with its CLI, plus a LaunchKit starter. Identity Forge generates an original design system (28 semantic colour roles in light and dark, fonts, layout rules and motifs) and installs the brief together with the tokens it references, via MCP, a CLI or a shadcn registry.
Does getdesign.md give me design tokens?
It gives you a DESIGN.md describing a design, with values stated in the document. It does not write a semantic token file into your stylesheet, which is a consequence of what a catalogue entry can be: an analysis of another product cannot ship you that product's token file.
Is Identity Forge a getdesign.md alternative?
For getting an installable design system, yes. For browsing many worked examples of the DESIGN.md format, getdesign.md is the larger collection and the two serve different purposes. Plenty of people read a catalogue for calibration and install a generated system to actually build against.
Can I use a DESIGN.md derived from a brand I like?
You can, and it is a reasonable way to see the format applied. Two caveats: an outside-in analysis rarely captures what a design refuses to do, which is where identity mostly lives, and a design's decisions are downstream of its audience: density that suits a tool used all day is the wrong answer for a page someone scans for forty seconds.
Is Identity Forge free?
Free kits and the shadcn registry work with no account. An API key (from /account/api-keys) is only needed for owned data, higher API quota, and Pro kits.