Omni Design — AI-native design studio inside the IDE
Six tabs, four output surfaces, one chat handle. Sketch, browse, prompt and ship — web, image, video and audio designs without leaving the editor.
Most "AI design tools" are a web app you tab into. You drag a reference, paste a prompt, wait, download, and come back to the IDE to copy-paste.
Omni Design refuses that round-trip. It is a full design studio that lives inside Hydite, in the same window as your code, your chat, your terminal and your version control. The canvas talks to the same workspace state that powers the rest of the IDE — and that is what makes it different from the dozens of stand-alone web tools.
1. What it is#
Omni Design opens as a regular editor tab. The tab is the canvas. The canvas exposes six panels, each tuned to one phase of the design loop, and addresses four output surfaces: web pages, images, videos and audio.
2. The six panels#
2.1 Sketch — a 60-second whiteboard#
A blank, infinite canvas with pen, shape and text tools. The whole point is to think with your hands before talking to AI. Sketch what you mean, then attach the strokes to a chat message and let the rest of the studio take over.
2.2 Designs — the project library#
The home page of Omni Design. Every project you have ever started lives here as a card with a thumbnail, the skill that produced its first frame, and the design system currently bound to it. Click a card and you are dropped back into that project's canvas with full history intact.
This is also where new projects are created. The "New project" dialog asks three questions in order:
- Skill. Which design recipe should bootstrap the first frame? (Landing page, dashboard, mobile shell, etc.)
- Design system. Which of the 68 built-in systems should this project follow? (Optional.)
- Name. What to call it.
Three picks, then the project opens. No template hunting, no boilerplate.
2.3 Examples — prompts curated by humans#
A catalogue of prompts grouped by surface, scenario and target skill. Each example shows the prompt, a preview of what it produces, and a one-click Send to chat action. The skill that pairs best with the example is already attached, so the next request runs against the right design recipe out of the gate.
Use Examples when you want fast inspiration; use Skills when you want to invoke a specific recipe.
2.4 Skills — the design recipe shelf#
A skill is a recipe: a description, an example prompt, and a recommended output surface. Skills cover everything from landing pages and dashboards to onboarding flows, hero illustrations and explainer videos. Each card has a "Use this skill" button that opens the new-project flow with the skill pre-selected.
Skills are organised by mode (chat, page, image, video, audio) and surface (desktop, mobile). The filter bar lets you narrow to exactly the slice you need.
2.5 Design Systems — 68 brands, live previews#
The Design Systems tab is the gallery for the same library you can reach with /design. Each card carries:
- A live preview rendered with that system's tokens (typography, spacing, motion).
- Up to four colour swatches.
- A category tag (platform, developer, consumer, AI, automotive, media).
- "Copy id" and "Open preview" actions.
Click a card and you can apply the system to the current Omni Design project so every subsequent generation follows that visual language. This is the visual counterpart to the chat-side /design slash command — same library, two different entry points.
2.6 Image / Video Prompts — the model-prompt cookbook#
Two tabs at the right edge of the canvas hold prompt templates for image and video generation models, tagged by category, model, aspect ratio and license. Each template has a preview, the prompt itself, and the source citation. You can:
- Send the prompt directly to chat.
- Drop it into the current project as the next generation.
- Save your own variations alongside the curated ones.
These two tabs cover the image and video surfaces that High Design intentionally does not.
3. The four output surfaces#
| Surface | What gets produced | Typical Omni Design entry point |
|---|---|---|
| Web | A live, code-backed web page or component | Designs · Skills (page/component skills) · Design Systems |
| Image | Logos, OG images, hero illustrations, brand swatches | Image Prompts · Skills (image surface) |
| Video | Launch films, explainers, motion teasers | Video Prompts · Skills (video surface) |
| Audio | Voice-overs, sonic logos, AI-narrated walkthroughs | Skills (audio surface) |
The same project can mix all four. A single record in the Designs tab can hold the landing page, the launch hero image, the announcement video and the audio version of the press release — all sharing one chat history and one design system.
4. Driving Omni Design from chat#
Omni Design exposes a chat participant. From any chat panel in Hydite (Hydite Chat, Copilot, Claude Code, or any third-party agent harness that supports participants) you can address it directly:
| Type into chat | What happens |
|---|---|
@omni-design | Opens the canvas on the Designs tab. |
@omni-design /sketch | Opens the canvas on the Sketch whiteboard. |
@omni-design /examples | Jumps to the curated prompts tab. |
@omni-design /skills | Jumps to the skill catalogue. |
@omni-design /design-systems | Jumps to the gallery of 68 systems. |
@omni-design /image-prompts | Jumps to image prompt templates. |
@omni-design /video-prompts | Jumps to video prompt templates. |
@omni-design /exit | Confirms and closes the canvas. |
When you click "Send to chat" anywhere inside the canvas, Omni Design rewrites your prompt to include a skill marker so the next request runs against the right recipe automatically — no copy-paste, no manual tagging.
5. Why this layout#
A common pattern across "AI design" tools is to stack everything on one giant page: prompt box at the top, gallery in the middle, history at the bottom. It looks tidy but it punishes the moments you actually need: comparing two reference images, narrowing a skill, or applying a design system without losing your draft.
The six-panel layout is the result of treating each design phase as a real surface:
- Think → Sketch.
- Search → Designs.
- Borrow → Examples / Skills / Prompts.
- Constrain → Design Systems.
Each phase has its own tab, its own keyboard rhythm, and its own state. Switching between them takes one click; staying inside one is a full-screen experience.
6. When to reach for it#
Use Omni Design when:
- You have no code yet and want to explore a brand-new product.
- You need output on a non-web surface (image, video, audio).
- You want to try several skills or design systems quickly and compare.
- You want a reference-driven workflow — pick an example, fork it, iterate.
Use High Design instead when you already have a running codebase and you want to redesign a screen pixel-by-pixel. Use the /design slash command when you only need to lock the design system without opening any canvas at all.
7. Status#
Omni Design ships with the default Hydite build. All six tabs, the four output surfaces, the @omni-design chat participant and the design-system catalogue are stable and part of the private beta. Access is gated by a Hydite OAuth invite — see the Hydite overview.
8. Next steps#
- High Design → — the code-aware canvas for already-running products.
- Built-in design systems → — the 68-system catalogue, also reachable via
/design. - Design overview → — how all three design surfaces fit together.
One line. Omni Design is what an AI design studio looks like when you stop treating it as a separate app — and start treating it as another lens on the same workspace.