Build your own Canva with Claude Code

A drag-and-drop graphic design tool: canvas with text, shapes and images, templates for social posts, layers, alignment and snapping and more.

1–2 weeksMore screens, accounts and a backend

The Claude Code prompt

Build my own take on Canva: a drag-and-drop graphic design tool. Give it an original name, logo, colours and copy, and do not use Canva's name, branding or assets.

Version one should have:
- Canvas with text, shapes and images
- Templates for social posts
- Layers, alignment and snapping
- Brand colours and fonts
- Export to PNG and PDF

The hard part: The canvas editor. Build on Fabric.js or Konva and keep templates as JSON.

How to build it:
1. Read this folder first. If it is empty, set up Next.js (App Router, TypeScript, Tailwind) with Postgres through Prisma or Supabase, and Supabase Auth or Auth.js for sign-in. Write a short PLAN.md with the data model, screens, third-party services and what you are leaving out of version one.
2. Build the core loop end to end before anything else: canvas with text, shapes and images, working with real data saved to the database.
3. Add the rest of the features one at a time, and seed realistic demo data so every screen looks alive.
4. Keep API keys in environment variables, and put any paid service behind a small interface with a local stub, so the app runs on a fresh machine without accounts.
5. Run it, click through every screen on desktop and mobile widths, fix what breaks, and finish with a summary of what works, what is stubbed and how to deploy it.

Paste it into Claude Code in an empty folder. It plans first, so read PLAN.md and steer before it starts building.

Version one

  • Canvas with text, shapes and images
  • Templates for social posts
  • Layers, alignment and snapping
  • Brand colours and fonts
  • Export to PNG and PDF

The hard part

The canvas editor. Build on Fabric.js or Konva and keep templates as JSON.

Make it yours: a niche Canva ignores, an original name and brand, and one feature it does badly done well.

More to build

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