/extract-design

name: extract-design
description: Extract colours, typography, spacing, components and W3C design tokens from a live website with Dembrandt. Use when you need a site's real tokens or want to seed a design system from it.
metadata:
  priority: 9
  requires: "dembrandt>=0.39.0"
  pathPatterns:
    - "**/tokens/**"
    - "**/theme/**"
    - "tailwind.config.*"
    - "**/design-system/**"
    - "**/*.css"
    - "**/*.scss"
    - "**/styles/**"
  promptSignals:
    phrases:
      - "extract design"
      - "design tokens"
      - "reverse engineer"
      - "copy design"
      - "extract colors"
      - "extract typography"
      - "brand tokens"
      - "design system from"
      - "extract from website"
      - "dembrandt"
      - "what colors does"
      - "what fonts does"
      - "design of this site"
retrieval:
  aliases:
    - extract design tokens
    - reverse engineer design
    - get colors from website
    - extract brand
    - design system extraction
    - dembrandt
    - copy design system
  intents:
    - extract design tokens from a live site
    - reverse engineer a website's visual design
    - seed a new design system from an existing product
    - get exact colors, fonts, and spacing from a URL
    - analyze a competitor's design system
    - generate tailwind config from a real site
    - generate shadcn theme from a real site
  examples:
    - extract the design system from stripe.com
    - what colors and fonts does linear.app use
    - reverse engineer vercel.com's design tokens
    - get the tailwind config for this site
    - copy the design system from this URL
    - what is the primary color of this website

Extract Design — Dembrandt

Dembrandt runs a headless Chromium browser against any URL, walks up to thousands of DOM elements, reads computed CSS, and returns a structured design system: colors with confidence scoring, typography styles, spacing scale, border radius, borders, shadows, and interactive component styles.

How to Run

# Zero-install — npx fetches the package on first run (lowest friction)
npx -y dembrandt https://dembrandt.com

# Or install once (global), then call `dembrandt` directly
npm i -g dembrandt

# Basic extraction — outputs to terminal
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com

# JSON output — pipe into files or other tools
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --json-only > dembrandt-tokens.json

# W3C DTCG format (design-tokens.org standard)
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --dtcg --save-output

# Generate DESIGN.md (human + AI readable brand doc)
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --design-md

# Multi-page crawl (follows internal links)
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --crawl 5

# Dark mode colors
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --dark-mode

# Mobile viewport
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --mobile

# Everything saved to output/
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --save-output

# Tailwind v4 @theme CSS — observed values only  [dembrandt 0.28+]
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --tailwind src/app.css

# Self-contained HTML report — open offline or attach as a CI artifact  [dembrandt 0.19+]
dembrandt https://dembrandt.com --html report.html

# Drift gate — compare against a saved baseline; exits 1 on drift  [dembrandt 0.19+]
dembrandt https://app.example.com --compare baseline.json --html report.html

MCP Usage (async by default)

To expose Dembrandt as MCP tools, add this server to the agent's MCP config (no install — `npx` fetches it on first run):

{ "mcpServers": { "dembrandt": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "dembrandt", "mcp"] } } }

When using the Dembrandt MCP server, all extraction tools return a `job_id` immediately rather than blocking. Poll `get_job_status` until `status` is `"completed"`:

1. get_design_tokens({ url: "dembrandt.com", pages: 5 })
   → { job_id: "job_123_abc", status: "queued" }

2. get_job_status({ job_id: "job_123_abc" })
   → { status: "running" }   // poll again

3. get_job_status({ job_id: "job_123_abc" })
   → { status: "completed", result: { ... } }

4. get_findings({ job_id: "job_123_abc" })      // no need to resend the extraction
   → { findings: [ ... ], contrast: { ... } }

**Hand the `job_id` to the analysis tools instead of passing the extraction back.** Every pure tool accepts it, and the queue keeps the whole extraction for an hour, so a job started by a narrow tool such as `get_color_palette` still feeds `export_dtcg`. Passing the extraction inline works and wins when you give both, but a real extraction is far too large to travel back through the model as a tool argument. [dembrandt 0.29+]

Pass `sync: true` to any extraction tool to block and return the result directly (useful on fast networks, risks timeout on slow sites, and proportionally slower when `pages` is above 1).

Extraction tools: `get_design_tokens` (everything), `get_color_palette`, `get_typography`, `get_component_styles`, `get_surfaces`, `get_spacing`, `get_brand_identity`, `get_motion` (durations, easings, named keyframes, hover patterns, and the gradients that travel with them) [dembrandt 0.36+]. All accept `slow`, `mobile` (mobile viewport), and `cookie` (cookie string for authenticated pages); `get_design_tokens` and `get_color_palette` also accept `darkMode` and `wcag` (contrast analysis). [dembrandt 0.23.1+ for mobile/cookie/wcag]

Every extraction tool also crawls, which is the single biggest lever on token quality: one page gives you one page's tokens. [dembrandt 0.29+]

| Option | What | |---|---| | `pages` | Extract up to N pages and merge them into one token set (1 to 20). Pages come from DOM links, or from sitemap.xml when `sitemap` is true | | `paths` | Name the extra paths explicitly, e.g. `["/pricing", "/docs"]`. Overrides discovery | | `sitemap` | Discover from sitemap.xml. Alone it takes up to 20 pages; `pages` caps it | | `header` | Extra HTTP headers, a string or a list, e.g. `"Authorization: Bearer ..."`, for pages a cookie cannot reach | | `cookieFile` | Path to a saved sess