Design mobile app screens with Daisy

Design mobile app screens with Daisy

Daisy is a design agent that works on a canvas. You don't build screens yourself: you brief Daisy, the way you'd brief a human designer. A project is one conversation plus its canvas. You send a message, Daisy plans the work, builds and edits screens on the canvas, sets the theme, and replies. Every design change, from a ten-screen flow to "make that button red", is one message.

Before the first call

• The key lives in DAISY_API_KEY and starts with dsy_live_. If it's missing or looks different, stop and ask the user for one (they mint it in Settings → API keys at https://daisy.now). Read it from the environment every time; keep it out of files and output.
• The API needs an active Daisy subscription. A 403 telling you so means the user must subscribe or fix billing at https://daisy.now/pricing.
• scripts/send.sh (next to this file) needs curl and jq.

The loop

1. Pick the project. If the user is starting a new app or idea, use new. If they named an existing project, find its id:

   curl -s "https://daisy.now/api/projects" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $DAISY_API_KEY" | jq -r '.data[] | "\(.id)  \(.name)  (\(.screenCount) screens)"'
   

   Ask the user when more than one project could be the one they mean.

2. Write the brief. Put the whole ask in one message: the app and its audience, every screen you want, what each one shows, and the look (light or dark, playful or calm, brand colour). One rich message for a whole flow beats one message per screen, because Daisy plans the set and keeps it consistent. For a change, name the screen by its label ("On Settings, …"). Daisy remembers the project's conversation, so follow-ups can be short ("make it darker", "add an empty state to Home").

3. Send it and wait.

   scripts/send.sh new "A habit tracker for students. Design onboarding (welcome, pick 3 habits, reminder time) and a Today screen with a streak and checklist. Calm, light, green accent." --name "Habitat"
   scripts/send.sh abc123 "On Settings, make Delete account a red destructive row at the bottom."
   

   A build of several screens takes a few minutes, so give the command a tool timeout of about 10 minutes, or pass --budget SECONDS below your shell's limit. Pass a long brief on stdin with - in place of the text. Add --image https://…/ref.png (up to 8, public https URLs of png, jpg, webp or gif) to give Daisy reference screenshots.

4. Read the summary it prints:

   {
     "projectId": "abc123",
     "canvas": "https://daisy.now/project/abc123",
     "messageId": "5f0c…",
     "finished": true,