DesignAround

DesignAround

DesignAround is a command-line tool for people who sell or design physical products. It checks a product's appearance against published design patents in the US, China and Europe, helps change the design until it is visibly different, and prepares patent drawings and a filing package for your own application.

It runs on your computer: a CLI, a chat workbench, an agent Skill and an MCP server. The CAD engine, your models and your cases stay in ~/.designaround. The server at designaround.elidot.com handles your account, registry searches and hosted AI models.

DesignAround is software, not a law firm, and does not give legal advice or freedom-to-operate opinions. A screen is a starting point. A registered patent attorney or agent you choose reviews and files an application.

Install

Python 3.11 or 3.12 is required. Install from PyPI:

uv tool install designaround --python 3.12# or: python3.12 -m pip install designarounddesignaround onboard

The same packages are also on the website package index:

uv tool install designaround --python 3.12 --index https://designaround.elidot.com/simple/

This repository is the source for those client packages (packages/core, packages/engine, packages/cli), the agent Skill (skills/designaround) and the agent runtime sources the CLI bundles (agents/).

designaround onboard stores a trial key in your OS keychain. designaround --version prints the version on your computer.

MCP

designaround mcpdesignaround mcp --print-config

designaround mcp serves seven tools on stdio: screen, design_around, run_status, viewpack, compare, case_list and decision_card. Paid tools need a credit cap. --print-config prints the snippet for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Claude Desktop and VS Code.

Skill

designaround skill install claude-code

The same command accepts cursor, codex, gemini-cli, opencode, openclaw, kiro or all. The Skill text in this repository is skills/designaround/SKILL.md.

Guides and support

Guides (they stand alone, without this tool): https://designaround.elidot.com/guides/

Website: https://designaround.elidot.com

Support: [email protected]. We reply within 3 business days (Monday to Friday, China Standard Time, UTC+8).

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.

中文

DesignAround 是给产品卖家和设计师用的命令行工具。它把产品外观和美国、中国、欧洲已经公开的外观设计做比对，帮你把设计改到看起来明显不同，并准备专利附图和申请材料包，供你自己去申请。程序在你的电脑上运行。它是软件，不是律师事务所，不提供法律意见。安装、指南和邮箱见上文。官网：https://designaround.elidot.com。