open-design open-design-v0.21.1

Nix distribution note (added August 31, 2026): the repository-owned flake was retired on main in commit 49cc51058fd76ec825fcd6a9f684f8d3a138fca3 via PR #7644. If you still need the last repository-shipped flake, pin to tag open-design-v0.21.1 (commit fbd4d48ebe21b20f4a2faaad0ad5e53aaeb1dc4b) or an earlier tag instead of updating against main.

🌟 Codename: Community First: No Login Required

🔓 Open Design has always been rooted in the community. Now we’re returning to that promise: no account required. Choose a local CLI or BYOK directly from Home and start creating. Open Design Cloud is still available whenever you need it.

🔥 Highlights

• 🔓 Start without signing in. Open Design no longer requires a Cloud account before you can begin creating. (#7381) Thanks @Siri-Ray.

• 🧰 Use your own tools from Home. Choose an existing local CLI or connect your preferred model provider through BYOK. (#7381) Thanks @Siri-Ray.

• 🧪 Introducing Open Design Labs. Enable Open Design Harness in Settings to try a new generation strategy and create more polished results. More experiments are on the way. (#7445, #7514) Thanks @lefarcen.

📥 Download: Tag open-design-v0.21.1

Platform	Architecture	Asset
macOS	Apple Silicon	DMG
macOS	Intel	DMG
Windows	x64	Installer

✨ Added

Creation and experiments

• 🧪 Design Harness is now one switch away. Open Design Labs has a home in Settings, where you can opt into the latest generation strategy without installing another build or reaching for a terminal. The switch explains what it covers, saves across restarts and tells you when another policy owns the choice. (#7445)

• 🖼️ Real subjects get real imagery. When a prototype names a person, product, artwork, event or place, Open Design now searches for and uses the actual referent instead of inventing a look-alike. Images keep their natural proportions and full frame instead of being forced into a leftover placeholder crop. (#7436)

• 📱 OD Next understands the bones of a mobile interface. Calendars, stats, settings rows, top bars, bottom navigation, images and confirmation dialogs now receive purpose-built structure, so generated phone prototypes read clearly without flattening every pattern into the same generic row. (#7327)

Team collaboration

• 🧭 Large Team workspaces can put a ceiling on background catch-up. An opt-in cumulative budget keeps background materialization from growing without bound while leaving foreground project opens immediate and unaffected. (#7403) Thanks @lefarcen.

⚡ Performance & reliability

• ⚡ Team projects open from a warm path. Repeated project-list and deep-link reads reuse a short-lived, workspace-safe cache; shares, unshares and workspace changes invalidate it immediately. (#7398) Thanks @lefarcen.

• 🚀 Home starts with less competition for the screen. Duplicate catalog reads are collapsed, and the hidden Automations area waits until you actually open it before fetching its data. (#7408, #7413) Thanks @lefarcen.

• 🧹 Stopping a run now means the whole run has stopped. Cancel, timeout, failure, retry and app shutdown clean up the complete Agent process tree before declaring the attempt finished, preventing abandoned children from continuing to consume resources. (#7432) Thanks @Siri-Ray.

🐛 Fixed

Agents, models and setup

• ☁️ Cloud sign-out no longer closes the door on local work. Local Agent and BYOK stay selectable while signed out or while Cloud is unavailable, and signing out preserves provider keys, base URLs, model choices and media defaults stored on this installation. (#7381, #7437) Thanks @Siri-Ray.

• 🧭 Run errors now point to the action that can actually help. An incompatible Agent handshake asks you to change Agent versions instead of retrying; membership concurrency limits show their reset guidance; and an AMR model rejection stops before a second, misleading prompt failure can replace the real cause. (#7303, #7429, #7458) Thanks @lefarcen, @Siri-Ray.

• 🚦 A real upstream limit is no longer buried under “empty output.” Quota, rate-limit and availability signals keep priority over generic no-result classification, so retry behavior follows the failure that actually happened. (#7248) Thanks @mturac.

• 💬 A clarification form you can see is a clarification form you can answer. Strategy tasks no longer become terminal behind a rendered question form and reject the response with an internal state error. (#7509)

• 🔌 A missing local engine now fails clearly instead of returning the app shell as if it were data. Login, Agent discovery and other API calls surface a recognizable, retryable connection failure when the daemon origin is not configured. (#7399) Thanks @lorenzozanee.

Studio, preview and export

• 🧩 HTML that writes HTML no longer tears its own preview apart. Print windows, email templates, srcdoc payloads and markup stored in scripts or attributes keep running as authored. Preview, deck, PDF and artifact export now insert Open Design's bridges at the real document boundaries instead of mistaking tag-shaped text for structure. (#7421, #7422) Thanks @lefarcen.

• 📊 Editable PPTX export no longer succeeds with an invisible background. Empty Chromium captures are retried; if a correct layered capture still cannot be produced, export stops with a clear failure instead of handing you a transparent slide. (#7337) Thanks @mrcfps.

• 🎛️ Small editing controls stay in their lane. The chat resize handle no longer steals hover, click or drag from the scroll edge; the slash-command menu keeps each row readable; and switching to Image selects it immediately without dimming the creation tabs. (#7324, #7368, #7375) Thanks @Siri-Ray, @lefarcen.

Teams, navigation and interface

• 💳 Team balance follows the Team workspace you are viewing. Settings and Home agree on the active workspace balance and no longer fall back to a member's personal wallet when Team data is unavailable. (#7384)

• 🎞️ Private projects use the Team balance they belong to. Vela image and video generation now preserves the project’s Workspace billing scope without changing its private sharing state. (#7504) Thanks @alchemistklk.

• ↩️ Creating a design system brings you back to where you started. Whether you entered from a conversation, picker, Library, Home or the sidebar, Back restores that original context instead of dropping you at a generic page. (#7367) Thanks @lefarcen.

• 🌐 Plugin and recovery copy speaks the app's language. Skill-card descriptions follow the selected locale with a predictable English fallback, and a missing bundled scenario explains—in the same language—how reinstalling restores it. (#7369, #7325) Thanks @lefarcen, @Siri-Ray.

• 📣 The Go Plan sunset notice reaches the right people in the right language. Targeted message variants open the dedicated notice, and its copy, actions and layout follow the selected Open Design locale instead of falling back to hard-coded Chinese. (#7430, #7453, #7477) Thanks @nettee.

• 🔗 Cloud authorization returns to the installed app, not a stray Electron window. Development runs no longer take over the system-wide opendesign:// link handler, while packaged builds keep their normal sign-in and invite handoff. Signed-out users also stop seeing a campaign badge that requires an account. (#7479) Thanks @lefarcen.

• ⬆️ The update action stays where you expect it. Signed-out desktop users now see the ready-to-install update in the same top-right cluster as signed-in users, clear of the Home composer and model picker. (#7482) Thanks @Siri-Ray.

🙏 Thanks to everyone who shipped 0.21.1

@alchemistklk · @lefarcen · @lorenzozanee · @mixxer · @mrcfps · @mturac · @nettee · @Siri-Ray