What is Glue?

Glue is an open-source design editor that gives AI coding agents an infinite canvas to create and iterate on UI components, then export production-ready code in real time. Part of YC W2026, it was founded by Perbhat Kumar (ex-Amazon Kindle, ex-Microsoft Copilot Studio) and Tejas Priyadarshi (ex-Microsoft, ex-Meta).

The tool addresses the design-to-code gap that coding agents struggle with. Developers hover and click on UI elements in the Glue desktop app, add specific visual annotations (colors, spacing, layout changes), and the tool exports those annotations with source file and line number data as readable specs for coding agents. The handoff command generates plugin files for Claude Code, with Codex and Gemini CLI support coming soon.

Glue integrates with existing React projects (Next.js 14+ and Vite 5+) as devDependencies with zero production impact. The founders position it as "the first design tool with AI as the primary user" — rather than bolting AI onto traditional design tools, Glue is built from the ground up for human-agent collaboration in the collapsing EPD (Engineering, Product, Design) workflow.

Key features

Core capabilities this platform advertises.

Infinite design canvas
Agent-driven UI creation
Production code export
Claude Code & Codex integration
Open source

Strengths and tradeoffs

What this tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.

Pros

Novel approach as the first design tool built with AI agents as the primary user
Open source with zero-cost adoption and zero production impact (devDependencies only)
Visual annotation workflow provides higher fidelity than text prompting for UI changes
Strong founder backgrounds from Amazon, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and Meta
Non-destructive integration that works with existing React projects without modification

Cons

Plans & pricing

What's included in each plan, and how the tiers compare.

Open Source

Free

Full platform access
Desktop app and CLI
React project integration
Claude Code handoff

View official pricing page

Common use cases

Designers and developers building UI with AI agents

UI component design
Visual prototyping with agents
Design-to-code workflow
Agent-assisted interface building

Using Glue with Respan

Glue helps coding agents create better UI components through visual annotations. Respan can monitor the LLM calls made by the coding agents that consume Glue specs, tracking cost and quality of AI-generated code.