Overview
Today we're launching the Design Initiative, a long-term program to build the next generation of design software and the infrastructure underneath it. Nokuva, our AI-native design editor, is the first product of that work; the initiative is the commitment that it won't be the last.
The premise: interfaces should be schema-backed, verifiable, and convertible to code — not pictures that get re-implemented by hand. That takes more than an editor. It takes protocols, models, and data built for design from the start.
What the initiative covers
The initiative spans three layers. The editor — Nokuva, where you describe what you want, refine it on a real canvas, and export production-ready code. The protocols — Virtual DOM, Virtual Browser, and Virtual Canvas, the published specs that make generated interfaces verifiable rather than approximate. And the substrate — the UI/UX training datasets and the design-specific model that make generation good enough to trust.
The protocol layer stays open. Every spec ships through the research registry with a conformance suite, so tools that aren't ours can produce and consume the same verifiable interface definitions.
Why now
Models crossed the line where generating a real interface is routine. What's missing is the layer underneath: generated design still lands as pixels and mockups, disconnected from the systems that have to run it. The result is the same design-to-code handoff the industry has complained about for twenty years, now at machine speed.
Our verification research closed the other half of the argument. With Virtual DOM Protocol v2, an interface definition can be checked — does it match the schema, does it render, does it behave — which is what turns generated design from a suggestion into an artifact.
What ships next
Nokuva is in public beta today and moves to general release later this year — free for the first month, for everyone. Deeper protocol integration and the design-specific model roll into the editor between now and then.
We're also growing the team behind the initiative. Open roles are on the careers page, and more announcements — including one about the people joining this effort — land this week.
