The catalog has 110 design systems. That is too many choices. Paralysis sets in. You end up picking whatever looks cool in the preview and wondering why your app feels off three weeks later.
Here is a framework. Four questions. Five minutes. You will land on the right one.
Question 1: Who is your user?
This is the most important question and most people skip it.
Developer / technical
Dark minimal. Cool tones. Monospace code snippets. Think Linear, Vercel, Warp.
Consumer / general public
Warm, colorful, approachable. Rounded corners. Think Airbnb, Duolingo, Spotify.
Enterprise / B2B
Neutral, restrained. No flashy colors. Trust over personality. Think Salesforce, Atlassian, IBM.
Question 2: What is the trust requirement?
Some products need users to trust them before they do anything. Others just need to be fun.
High stakes: fintech, health, security, legal. These need cool, desaturated colors. Generous spacing. Nothing that feels rushed or playful. Stripe is the archetype. Wise, Brex, Plaid follow the same logic.
Low stakes / entertainment: a productivity app, a social tool, a game. You can go more expressive. Color and personality are features, not risks.
Question 3: What aesthetic do you want to be known for?
Pick two words. These come from the tag taxonomy used across the catalog.
Dark + Minimal
Linear, Vercel, Cursor
Bold + Colorful
Duolingo, Spotify, Discord
Warm + Editorial
Substack, Ghost, Beehiiv
Clean + Corporate
Stripe, Notion, Figma
Expressive + Brand-led
Nike, Apple, Starbucks
Technical + Dense
Datadog, Grafana, PostHog
If none of those pairs feel right, that is a signal. You might need to write your own DESIGN.md from scratch rather than borrowing one.
Question 4: Which product do you want to feel adjacent to?
Not copy. Adjacent. There is a difference.
Copying means your product looks like a clone and users notice. Adjacent means you borrow the emotional register. The level of seriousness. The relationship with whitespace. The type choices.
Find one product your target users already use and trust. Start with their DESIGN.md. It will not be a perfect fit. But it gives the AI a clear starting point, and you can customize from there.
The lookup table
Here are the most common use cases and the DESIGN.md files that work best for each.
Building a dev tool
Dark, minimal, fast. Developers expect this aesthetic. It signals precision.
Building a fintech app
Cool tones, generous whitespace, restrained color. Trust is the product.
Building a consumer app
Warmer, more expressive, approachable. Users are not technical, they want delight.
Building an AI product
Clean, focused, surfaces information clearly. The product is the output.
The 5-minute version
Answer the four questions. Use the lookup table. Pick the one that matches your use case. Drop it in your project. Run a prompt. See how it looks.
If it feels right, you are done. If something is off, you have a concrete file to edit rather than a vague feeling to act on.
The worst choice is no choice. A wrong DESIGN.md you can edit is better than no DESIGN.md at all.
Browse the full catalog
110 DESIGN.md files, filterable by aesthetic, category, and use case.
Browse the catalog