Stitch 2: Google makes its move

Google shipped DESIGN.md yesterday alongside Stitch 2, and I think it's the more interesting thing.

DESIGN.md is a portable markdown design system format — extract one from any live URL, drop it into Stitch, Claude Code↗, Cursor↗, or Antigravity↗. David East put it plainly: "Yes. You can program design now." What makes this different from the usual AI design tool announcement is that it's a format, not a feature — closer in spirit to what MCP did for developer tooling.

The rest of Stitch 2 is a more mixed bag. Infinite canvas, "Vibe Design" (describe the mood rather than the components), a Voice Canvas that interviews you as you work, instant interactive prototyping. Some of this is genuinely useful; some of it is Google throwing things at the wall before Google I/O. The output quality is inconsistent, there's no team collaboration, and it currently exports HTML and CSS rather than React (React is apparently coming before May).

The graveyard question will follow every Stitch announcement until it doesn't, which is fair. But the launch tweet got 6.72 million views, Demis Hassabis amplified it personally, and Figma↗'s stock dropped about 8% — which tells you how seriously people are taking this even when they're not sure what to make of it.

Figma↗'s response is worth watching: Cloud Mode MCP, which gives any web AI platform read-write access to your Figma↗ files with a pairing code. No install. It's a fast, well-targeted counter, and it suggests Figma↗ understands which part of its position is under threat.

Julian Oczkowski, 29 years in the industry, wrote the version of this take that's been circulating: "The design-to-code pipeline didn't get faster. It got eliminated. The designer whose entire value was opening Figma↗ and producing screens? That role just ended." I think that's directionally right, though it understates how much of what good designers do is judgment rather than production — and judgment doesn't get automated by a better canvas.

Where this leaves the workflow: Stitch for early exploration, then a coding agent — Codex↗, Claude, Gemini if Google has their way — to turn it into something shippable. Not one tool, and the interesting question isn't which tool wins but which handoff format becomes standard. Right now, DESIGN.md is Google's bet on that.