Why I Build in Claude, Not Just Copilot

A Microsoft advocate's honest take on Claude Design, and why it's now part of how we build for clients.

Anyone who follows me knows I'm all in on Ai. I'll happily bang the drum for Copilot, I've written guides on getting started with it, and I've got a whole series on getting the most out of your first 60 days with it. That's not changing.

But here's the bit people don't expect. When it comes to product development, front end work, or anything design led, I don't reach for Copilot. I reach for Claude.

I know how that sounds coming from someone who's built a chunk of his content around Microsoft Ai. But LLMs aren't interchangeable. They're not all built for the same job. Copilot is where I live for anything inside the Microsoft stack. Claude is where I live when I'm mocking up front end work for our development team, or building something I want them to see rather than just read about.

Claude Design has actually changed how we build

Claude Design launched on 17 April 2026, and I'll be honest, when I first tried it I wasn't impressed. It took a friend of mine, Jay Janes, who genuinely loves the tool, to sit down with me and show me how to actually use it properly. That conversation changed how I work.

My developer Kev told me recently that I'm the pickiest person about design he's ever worked with. So when I tell you Claude Design impressed me, that's not a throwaway line.

The lesson I took from Jay, and the one I want to pass on, is this: the output is only as good as the groundwork you put in before you start prompting. Open it up and start typing without any setup, and you'll get something you'll never actually use.

Build the system before you build anything else

Here's what actually works.

Open Claude Design, switch to Fable 5.1 (the most capable model available when I wrote this), and ask it to look at your website and build a detailed design system from it. Give it five minutes and you'll have a proper starting point, built from your own brand, not a template.

From there, keep feeding it. Pull together the Canva files you already use for social, upload them, and tell it which ones represent what you like. Be specific about what you don't want too. No gradients. No curved corners. Brand colours only. The more direction you give it, the sharper the system gets.

It doesn't stop once the system exists. Every time you build something new, go back to the style guide and add what worked and what didn't. Claude remembers it. Feed it your leadership photos, your office shots, your van livery, your icon set, whatever visual assets you actually use, and it will organise them properly so they're ready to pull into future work.

All in, I spent around six hours across a week building mine. Once it was done, I shared it across the business. Anyone on our Claude Team licence can use it now, but I've locked it so nobody else can edit it.

From design system to a 15 page deck in an hour

The real test came when I used the system to build a sales deck for a new product we're launching, Flo Verified Mail.

Normally a sales deck is weeks of back and forth. Internal designers, external designers, copywriters, round after round of comments and changes.

This time I gave Claude a detailed brief. I wanted a deck that took someone with zero technical background on a proper journey: what the product is, why it exists, what problem it solves, how to get started, and what it costs.

Once it built the first version, the changes were nothing like the usual Ai experience. It doesn't regenerate the whole thing every time you ask for something. You click on a section, comment on it directly, and say add an icon here, change this wording, or even redesign this whole page, and it does exactly that. Need photography? It drops in placeholders you can replace by uploading your own or dragging one straight from a search, then positioning it yourself.

Within an hour I had a 15 page deck for a brand new product. Something that would normally take weeks, and if I'm honest, it looked better than what we'd usually produce internally.

The takeaway

We're not Claude experts and we don't sell Claude. But if you've ever assumed Ai still can't do proper design work, I was you six months ago. I was wrong, and I think you will be too.

Further reading

• Download our free guide: Your first 60 days with Microsoft Copilot
• Jay's introduction to Microsoft Copilot 365
• How to get more from Microsoft Copilot
• How Copilot agents transform your business