For designers

What you can build

Two archetypes — website and portal. One template targets one archetype. Within each archetype there’s a wide ambition range, from a 3-page brochure to a storefront with checkout, from a tight admin console to a kanban-driven workflow tool.

How to start

1. Download the Designer Kit from Studio and unzip it.
2. Open the folder in your AI agent. The agent reads the CLAUDE.md and the prompt files alongside it.
3. Tell it what you want to ship — in plain English. For example: “A creator-newsletter template, warm cream, weekly literary feel.”

From there the agent walks you through everything: on first use it installs the Vincia CLI for you and signs you in; then it scaffolds the template from your description, opens the preview, applies your feedback, and publishes when you’re ready. You stay in chat — the agent handles the terminal.

Want to run the CLI directly without an agent? See the CLI quickstart for the commands and the manual flow.

Three ways your work pays off

Same kit, same publish flow — three ways to deploy your design work and earn from it. You can do all three over time, on different projects.

Free + paid contributions go through the same LLM gate plus human review. Freelance / client work skips the public review (it’s yours and your client’s) but follows the same scaffolding flow.

Foundation tiers + specialty packs

Most designers ship a full design-template: theme tokens + section files + widget UI supplement, covering everything a user needs for the archetype. The three other foundation tiers exist when you want to ship just one slice instead — a theme that re-skins any template, a section library other designers can mix into their own layouts, or a ready-made collection (data + schema seed for a specific use case). All four have a working scaffold via your agent (or by hand: vincia create <type> <name>).

Specialty packs

Seven additional tiers extend the foundations along a single axis — iconography, motion, chrome, backgrounds, email, microcopy, imagery. They’re documented and accepted by the import pipeline; the dedicated scaffold command is rolling out, so for now author them following the tier guide and submit via the generic import flow.

Template anatomy — what you’re actually authoring

Optional reading: skip to the agent and let it walk you through these as they come up. A Vincia template is a small folder structured so Vincia can fill in brand-specific copy, photos, and palette per site at build time. Five things to know:

1. HTML/CSS folder, not one file. Each section is its own self-contained <section> file under sections/. Most archetypes need 6–9 sections per page. Authoring is pure markup + CSS — no JavaScript; Vincia handles interactivity.
2. Theme tokens own the visual identity. Color, typography, spacing, radii, shadows, motion durations all live as CSS custom properties in theme/tokens.css (--brand, --ink, --font-display, --space-5, etc.). Vincia re-skins your template per site by overriding :root values; your HTML never changes.
3. Slots get filled per site at build time. Every brand-specific text is {{HEADLINE}} / {{LEDE}} / etc.; every image is {{photo:hero-image}}. Vincia substitutes real copy and photos before serving HTML, so one template renders dozens of distinct brand sites.
4. Widget UI supplement. You also style how every typical widget for your archetype looks within your template. For a website: the sign-in forms, customer-private widgets (data-table, card-grid, kpi-card) on dashboard pages, and marketing widgets (hero, features, pricing, testimonials, FAQ, CTA). For a portal: data-table, kanban, calendar, chart, kpi-card, multi-step-form, permissions-editor, workflow-status. Templates that cover the full typical set earn a complete coverage badge in the marketplace.
5. Insertion zones or concept-locked. Mark drop zones (data-vincia-insertion-zone="after-features") where end users can add preset sections from a library of ~250 reusable blocks. Or set insertionZones: [] for a concept template — design is locked; users only edit copy, photos, palette, and typography.

Quality bar to register on the marketplace: ≥9.5/10. Reviewers grade on page narrative, type hierarchy, color discipline, distinctive moment, cross-page coherence, and accessibility (WCAG AA on body, focus-visible everywhere, reduced-motion respected).

Why your work compounds here

Vincia isn’t a Webflow alternative or a Squarespace alternative — it’s a durable base that absorbs new tools as they appear. People pick Vincia precisely so they can sit in one place and try many things from it: when a new payment processor matters, a connector for it shows up in the marketplace; when a new AI capability lands, it becomes a workflow step; when a new on-page pattern catches on, somebody ships it as a widget. The site stays where it is — the catalog around it grows.

Your template gets reused as those new pieces drop in. A great design from today still renders dozens of brand sites a year later because the slots, theme tokens, and widget supplement are stable contracts. That’s the compounding curve: every install adds to the durable shape of the platform, and your work is part of why a Vincia build outlasts the trend cycle.

The vocabularies designer assets extend live on /foundations: UiKit, ThemePreset, KitPreset, brand fingerprints, and the section-purpose taxonomy. Building the functional layer instead? See developer types →