The handoff
What is inside the bundle Claude Code receives, and the export seam where most disappointment actually happens.
The Claude Code handoff is the one lossless path, because it is the only destination that speaks the canvas's native language. Instead of a screenshot for an engineer to reverse-engineer, the bundle carries four things.
Component structure
The composition as a machine-readable spec — what the pieces are and how they nest, stated rather than inferred from pixels.
The design tokens in play
The tokens actually used on this canvas, not your entire system. Code inherits the decisions rather than the library.
Layout hierarchy
Nesting and spatial relationships, so responsive behaviour is derived from intent rather than guessed from one fixed-width screenshot.
Referenced assets
Images and media, in place and already wired — no scavenger hunt through a shared drive for the logo at the right size.
Design-to-engineering handoff has always leaked meaning, because the artefact crossing the gap — a picture — carries appearance but not reasoning. A bundle that states structure, tokens and hierarchy is the first handoff format where intent survives the jump.
That, more than the canvas, is the strategically interesting part of the product.
Six exits, and what each one costs
They are not interchangeable. Pick the destination before you design, because what you lose on the way out is decided by choices you make on the canvas — usually before you know you are making them.
| Destination | Choose it when | What you give up |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code handoff | It is getting built for real | Nothing that matters — the lossless path |
| Standalone HTML | It needs to live at a URL and behave exactly as designed | Nothing — this is the canvas |
| Internal URL or folder | Colleagues need to see or archive it in place | Reach beyond your organisation |
| Canva | Someone non-technical will keep editing, or it enters brand distribution | Interactivity and code-driven effects |
| PPTX | It opens in a meeting and someone will edit slides after you | Interactivity, custom type behaviour, anything animated |
| It is final. It gets printed, or attached to an email. | Every interaction — it becomes a picture of itself |
Claude Design rarely fails on the canvas. It fails after export. A deck that was beautiful in the browser arrives in PowerPoint with the type reflowed and the clever bit gone — and nothing went wrong, exactly. The canvas rewards code-driven ambition; PPTX and PDF punish it.
So decide the exit first. If it is ending as a PPTX, say so in the opening brief and design within slide grammar. If it is ending as a prototype or a URL, use the whole ceiling. The cost of naming the destination is one sentence; the cost of not naming it is the afternoon you spend rebuilding.