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@imgly/codesign-mcp

IMG.LY CoDesign — an MCP server that gives your AI agent a real design engine. It runs locally, so an agent can compose vector layouts, set type, place and edit images, and export print-quality PDF alongside PNG, JPEG, WebP and SVG — or turn the same design into an mp4 video with music, voiceover and sound effects.

It works with any MCP host — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex and others.

Requirements

• Node.js 22.15 or newer on your PATH
• The design engine downloads on first launch — give it a few minutes the first time

Install

Hosts spawn the server with npx, so there is no separate install step.

Keep the @latest pin in every recipe below. A bare npx spec caches the first version it sees and never updates.

Claude Code

claude mcp add codesign -- npx -y @imgly/codesign-mcp@latest stdio

Codex

codex mcp add codesign -- npx -y @imgly/codesign-mcp@latest stdio

Claude Desktop

Settings → Developer → Edit Config, then add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codesign": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@imgly/codesign-mcp@latest", "stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Other MCP hosts

Every other host spawns the same stdio server — only the config file and the top-level key differ. Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json) and Windsurf (~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json) take the block above as-is; VS Code (.vscode/mcp.json) uses the key servers instead of mcpServers.

What your agent gets

• A design loop. edit applies changes to a scene, preview renders what it looks like, inspect and changes report structure and diffs, history and list cover the workspace. Designs live on disk and persist across sessions.
• Embedded skills. The handbook, API reference, guides, plus task skills for brand, localization, resizing, format conversion and design review. The CoDesign plugin installs them as native skills; every other host reads them as MCP resources (skill://codesign/<name>/SKILL.md, the io.modelcontextprotocol/skills extension), and a host that can't read resources calls read_skill_resource with the same URI. One MCP prompt, /codesign, loads the whole design context in a single message (optionally with a brief) so a session needs no reference reads.
• Import and export. import opens Photoshop (.psd/.psb), InDesign (.idml), PowerPoint (.pptx), PDF, plain images and SVG as a new design; export writes PDF, print-ready PDF/X, PNG, JPEG, WebP, SVG, HTML, MP4 video, WAV/M4A audio and the portable, self-contained .imgly design file.
• Video and audio. Any design can become a video: timed clips, text and shape animations, transitions between clips, and audio tracks for music, voiceover and sound effects, rendered to H.264 mp4 with its sound. preview shows any frame on the timeline. Bring your own footage and audio with asset_add, or generate them (below). Needs the native engine — see Release channels.
• A visual editor. view opens the current design in a browser-based editor for hands-on tweaks; edits you save there come back as a new revision the agent can continue from.

Licensing

Each release ships with a CE.SDK license for the engine it bundles, so the install commands above work as-is — there is nothing to sign up for first, and it does not expire.

Production use needs a license of your own. See img.ly/pricing, or talk to us at img.ly/support.

Accounts and AI generation

The design tools need no account. Signing in is only required for AI generation (asset_generate — images, video clips, music, sound effects, voiceover and transcripts with word timings): call the login tool from inside a session and finish in your browser, or logout to sign out.

Your designs and your data

The server keeps everything under ~/.codesign/: your designs in workspace/, your session token in auth.json after you sign in, and a small amount of engine bookkeeping. Designs are read and written on your machine, and the view editor is served from a local port — no design is uploaded to run the design loop. AI generation and asset search contact IMG.LY services by design, since that is where they run.

Command line

The binary serves one transport and three subcommands:

codesign-mcp stdio           # MCP over stdin/stdout — what hosts spawn
codesign-mcp system-prompt   # the design context as one system prompt
codesign-mcp diagnose        # redacted log bundle for IMG.LY support
codesign-mcp --help

diagnose collects local logs into a .zip and makes no network calls.

Headless runs: system-prompt

An interactive host can invoke the /codesign prompt and get the whole design context in one message. A headless run cannot invoke a prompt at all — it gets a brief and starts working, so it pays the reference reads on every run, re-sends their results with every turn, and produces broken output when it skips one. system-prompt writes the same bundle — handbook, design rules, the edit-code API surface, judge, copy rules, quirks, fonts — as a system prompt, where it costs nothing to re-read:

codesign-mcp system-prompt -o codesign.md
claude -p "an A4 recruiting poster for a bakery" \
  --append-system-prompt-file codesign.md \
  --strict-mcp-config --mcp-config mcp.json
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