Side by side
| What | Sketchry | frontend-design |
|---|---|---|
| Price | From US$6 a month, or US$99 for Lifetime | Free, inside the public anthropics/claude-code repository |
| What it gives you | One decided layout: section order, type, motion and the checks, all settled | Design judgement: brainstorm a plan first (4 to 6 named hex values, type roles, a layout concept), review it, then write code |
| Same result every run? | The same structure, with your content in it | Deliberately not: it asks for a visual direction specific to each brief |
| Can you see it first? | Yes. Every Skill shows its finished result and some open a live demo without signing in | No. It is a document of guidance, with nothing to preview |
| What it covers | Websites, decks, marketing videos and app design: 71 Skills | Any frontend interface, including dashboards and settings screens that no template fits |
| Does it ship assets? | Some ship an asset pack and demo copy | No. The whole plugin is one SKILL.md, a README and a plugin manifest |
Checked 2026-10-15. The other column comes from the pages listed at the end.
What Sketchry does not do
- It costs money, and the Anthropic one does not
- One Skill is one direction. If you want a look made only for you, this is not the tool
- It covers sites, decks, videos and app screens. Dashboards and settings screens have no template here
Where frontend-design is limited
- It supplies judgement, not a result: you cannot know what you will get until it finishes
- The same brief twice gives two different designs, so reproducing last week is hard
- No assets and no demo copy, so you still bring the content
Who should pick which
- Use Anthropic's frontend-design when no template fits (a dashboard, a settings screen, an internal tool) or you want a one-off direction.
- Use Sketchry when the thing has a known shape (a product page, a restaurant site, a portfolio, a pitch deck): it is faster and you see the result first.
Using both, or switching
- Keep both. They answer different questions and do not overwrite each other.
- A common split: Sketchry for the site, frontend-design for an app screen or an internal dashboard.
Sources
Every figure above was read on the other company's own pages on 2026-10-15. Anything that could not be read is not stated.
- github.com/anthropics/claude-code · plugins/frontend-design · checked 2026-10-15
- frontend-design SKILL.md · checked 2026-10-15
- frontend-design README.md · checked 2026-10-15