> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.cortex.foundation/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Design desktop app

> The Cortex Design window: its sidebar, the Designs gallery, light and dark, offline states, and the download that is not published yet.

The **Cortex Design** window is the application that edits design canvases. Cortex Design has two
surfaces and only two: a **CANVASES** rail beside a Cortex Chat thread or a Cortex Code session,
which creates and lists canvases, and this window, which does the editing. There is no Design page
in the browser and no Design entry in the product switcher, so the window is not an optional extra
for power users. It is the editor.

One thing to settle before anything else: Cortex does not publish a download for this window yet,
so this page is not an install guide. What follows describes the window as it is built, so the
vocabulary matches when a build reaches you: the sidebar and its four destinations, the gallery it
opens on, the screens behind the other rows, light and dark, and the offline states.

## Getting the window

<Warning>
  No installer for the Cortex Design window is published yet. There is no platform list, no updater
  of its own, and no sign-in procedure to give you, and Cortex publishes no public download page for
  its desktop applications. [Ways to run Cortex](/getting-started/downloads) lists the applications
  you can run today, and is where this one will appear once it can be downloaded.
</Warning>

There is no editor in the browser to fall back on in the meantime. What you can still do from the
**CANVASES** rail in a Chat thread or a Code session is ask Cortex for a design, create an empty
canvas with **New canvas**, read each canvas's counts and status, and use **Copy reference** to
copy the canvas id that the Design window accepts as an address. Generating and editing frames, the
version history, the library and export all live in the window.

Design needs a Cortex account. Every Design surface refuses a visitor who is not signed in, and the
window draws that refusal as a dialog headed `Cortex Design is part of your Cortex account.`

## The sidebar

The sidebar carries the **Cortex Design** wordmark, a **New design** action beside it, and a search
field whose placeholder is **Search designs, frames, notes** with a **⌘K** badge. **Collapse
sidebar** narrows it when you want the canvas wider. Below the search field there are four
destinations, and nothing else:

| Destination  | What is there                                                                |
| ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Designs**  | Every design in your account, newest first, as a grid or a list              |
| **Library**  | Your components, tokens and pages, mirrored read-only in this window         |
| **Plugins**  | Your connectors, with a meta line counting how many are connected            |
| **Bot jobs** | The surface for handing a design to a Cortex Bot, which is not available yet |

Under them a **RECENT** section lists what you opened last. Before you have opened anything it
reads `Designs you open show up here, most recent first.` Your identity and the **Settings**
control sit in the footer.

There is no Chat or Code switcher in this window, by design. The Settings dialog says so in one
line of its own: `Code editor preferences stay in Cortex Code. This window is Design-only`. The
bindings the window advertises are `⌘N` for a new design, `⌘ \` to toggle the sidebar, `⌘K` to
focus the search field, `⌘E` to export, and `↵` to send your message in the editor thread.

## Designs, the screen it opens on

**Designs** is the landing screen and the gallery of every canvas you own, rather than one thread's
worth. Its header line reports the state of the list, rows are grouped under day headings such as
`Today` and `Earlier this week`, and there is a **Grid** or **List** view, filter chips and a
`Last edited` sort. [Design canvases](/design/canvases) covers the gallery control by control.

Before you have made anything the screen reads `Your first design starts as a sentence.` There are
three ways to get past it. Ask Cortex for the design inside a Chat thread or a Code session, use
**New canvas** in the rail beside that thread, or use **New design** here. Handing a brief to a
Cortex Bot is a fourth route the window suggests, and it is not available yet.

**New design** (`⌘N`) opens a sheet with four fields: **NAME**, of up to 48 characters, **START
FROM**, a **BRIEF** that becomes the first message in the design's thread, and **MODEL**. **Create
design** (`⌘↵`) makes it.

<Note>
  An account can keep up to **200 design canvases**, and that is the only cap on how many designs you
  can have. There is no daily allowance, no monthly allowance and no separate per-plan figure for
  Design. A deleted design is hidden rather than erased, and a hidden canvas is still yours, so it
  still occupies one of the 200.
</Note>

Deleting a design starts with a dialog that names it, lists what goes with it, and offers **Keep
it** or **Delete design**. A toast then offers **Undo** for ten seconds. Let that window pass and
the design is hidden, with its versions and images kept, until you restore it or permanently delete
it. The Chat thread that started the design is not touched either way.

## Library, Plugins and Bot jobs

**Library** is a read-only mirror in this window of the components, tokens and pages your account
reuses across canvases. Its tabs are **Components**, **Tokens** and **Pages**, each with a count,
and **Sync** pulls the library again after you have added items elsewhere. The tab strip carries a
fourth tab listing saved design files, which are files rather than library items and are not one of
the three kinds. See [Design library](/design/library).

**Plugins** is the same connector catalogue as the rest of Cortex, with a chip on each card marking
which surfaces that connector reaches, Design among them, and the sidebar row counts how many you
have connected. When a connector's authorisation lapses the window raises an authorisation-expired
toast with a **Reconnect** action. See [Design connectors](/design/plugins).

**Bot jobs** is drawn, and nothing is behind it. A Cortex Bot cannot open, read or change a design
canvas today, so the row, the **Hand to a Bot** sheet and the editor's **Hand to Bot** button start
nothing. [Bot jobs](/design/bot-jobs) explains what is planned.

Inside a canvas you get the editor itself: the board, a thread rail where you ask for changes, a
**Versions** button, and **Export**. The **Export** sheet offers **PNG**, which the window renders
on your own machine, and **JSON**, the canvas document. **SVG** and **PDF** are drawn in the same
sheet but disabled and marked for the next version. See [Generate and edit](/design/editor),
[Versions](/design/versions) and [Export a design](/design/export).

## Light and dark

**Settings → General** holds a **Theme** row with **Light**, **Dark** and **System**. The choice is
remembered on the machine you set it on rather than carried with your account, so it does not
follow you to another computer, and the window opens light until you change it. The **System**
option is offered but does not follow your operating system's own light or dark setting yet, so
pick **Light** or **Dark** explicitly.

Several other rows in Settings are drawn with a **COMING SOON** or **SOON** chip, including the
default model, the default thinking level, reasoning summaries, the answer font, chat-history
retention and the data export. [Design settings](/design/settings) goes pane by pane.

## When Cortex cannot be reached

The window is built to stay usable when the Design service cannot be reached, and to say so rather
than to look empty.

| What you see                                                      | What it means                                                                               |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `Syncing your designs…`                                           | The list is loading, which never looks like a list that is empty.                           |
| `{n} designs · synced {time}`                                     | The list is live and current.                                                               |
| `Nothing here yet`                                                | The list loaded and you have no designs.                                                    |
| `Couldn't reach Cortex — showing last sync` with a time           | You are offline and reading the last list that arrived.                                     |
| `Couldn't load your designs`, with **Work offline** and **Retry** | The service did not answer. Keep reading the last sync, or try again.                       |
| `Couldn't load connectors`, with **Retry**                        | The connectors page could not load. Connections you already have stay active.               |
| `Offline · retrying in 15s`                                       | A pill on the canvas-not-available state, shown while the window waits before trying again. |

While you are offline, canvases you already have open stay readable from the copy on your machine,
and edits queue and sync when the connection comes back. If your sign-in lapses while the window is
open you get a dialog headed `Your session expired`, and work done in the meantime is kept on the
machine and syncs when you are back in.

A canvas the window cannot fetch gets its own state, headed `This canvas isn't available`, with
**Back to Designs**. Cortex answers the same way for a canvas that was deleted and one that belongs
to another account. [Design troubleshooting](/design/troubleshooting) maps every Design refusal to
what to do about it.

## Related

* [Cortex Design](/design) for what the product is and how its two surfaces divide the work.
* [Design canvases](/design/canvases) for the gallery, the rail, renaming, deleting and the caps.
* [Design settings](/design/settings) for the panes inside this window.
* [Design troubleshooting](/design/troubleshooting) when a canvas or the window itself refuses.
* [Ways to run Cortex](/getting-started/downloads) for the applications you can run today.