# The design pass: one click makes an HTML page client-ready · Stacktree

Source: https://stacktr.ee/design-pass

[Skip to content](#main) [Stacktree](/)[Developers](/developers)[Agents](/agents)[Docs](/docs)[Use cases](/use-cases)[Pricing](/pricing)[Blog](/blog)[Dashboard](https://app.stacktr.ee)[Sign in →](https://app.stacktr.ee)      By [ Steve Smith ](/about) · Founder, Stacktree  ·  Last updated August 23, 2026          the design pass

#  Your agent wrote the page. One click makes it client-ready.

   Plain HTML in, considered page out — same content, same link.  The pass scores the page against Stacktree's written design standard, rebuilds it keeping every fact, and shows a before/after preview with the direction it chose. Nothing changes unless you apply.

  [ Publish a page and try it ](https://app.stacktr.ee/?join=1&from=seo_design_pass)     On every plan · about a minute a run · previews are free to discard

    stacktr.ee/p/TQgdSnDX…· same linkWeekly NoteInternal status page. Same words, before the pass.Done- Shipped the export fix.
- Closed four support threads.
Next- Draft the pricing FAQ.
- Review the backlog with Sam.
WEEKLY NOTEWeekly NoteInternal status page. Same words, after the pass.DONEShipped the export fix.Closed four support threads.NEXTDraft the pricing FAQ.Review the backlog with Sam.✦ Run the design passApplied. Same link, new look.

0s

The direction

“Treat it as a quiet internal status memo — a single confident teal accent, warm ink-on-paper neutrals, and hand-drawn status dots that make progress legible at a glance.”

A real run, compressed — the actual pass took 60 seconds and this is its actual direction.

##  How do you make an HTML page look professionally designed?

Host it on Stacktree and run the design pass: it reads the page, scores it against
      Stacktree's written design standard, rebuilds it with every fact and link intact, and shows a preview
      you can toggle against the current page. Apply keeps the same URL. If the page already has
      a real design, the pass says so and declines rather than restyling it into something worse.

## Made for the page nobody designed

 Most HTML worth sharing was never designed: an agent's 5 a.m. report, an export, a page hand-written for its facts rather than its looks. It reads fine and looks like 1996, and the person opening it can't tell diligence from default fonts. The design pass exists for that exact page. It is not a theme switcher; it rebuilds the page the way a designer would, and tells you the direction it took in one sentence, because a restyle you can't reason about is a restyle you can't trust.

## Preview first, apply second, abstain when right

 The pass never touches the live page on its own. It produces a preview with a before/after toggle, and its verdict can be "leave it alone": pages that already carry a real design get an explicit abstention, because the honest finding from testing was that blind restyles make designed pages worse. Apply routes through the normal replace path — same URL, all guards intact — and if the page was edited while the pass ran, the stale preview is discarded rather than applied over newer work.

## For the fleet, not just the click

 The one-click pass and connected agents share the same brain: the design guide is a served document (`GET /design-guide`, or the `design_guide` MCP tool), so an agent that publishes daily standing reports can do its own rebuilds with its own model, to the same standard. The click is for humans who got handed plain HTML; the guide is for pipelines that should never ship plain HTML in the first place.

FAQ

## Frequent questions

     What is the design pass? +  A one-click restyle for any HTML page hosted on Stacktree. The pass reads the page, scores it against Stacktree’s written design standard, picks a direction, and rebuilds it keeping every fact and link. You get a preview with a before/after toggle and a one-sentence explanation of the direction it chose; nothing changes unless you apply, and applying keeps the same URL.   Does the design pass change my content? +  No. The rebuild is content-parity by contract: every fact, number, and link survives, and the pass fails rather than ships if the rebuild would violate the page’s security settings. What changes is typography, spacing, color, and structure — the presentation layer.   What if my page is already well designed? +  The pass declines. Abstention is a first-class outcome, not an error: restyling a page that already has a design of its own makes it worse, so the pass says “this page already has a design of its own” and leaves it alone. That honesty is deliberate — a blind restyle is how good pages get ruined.   How long does it take, and what does it cost? +  About a minute for a typical page. It is included on every plan — Free and anonymous claims included — with a fair-use cap of 10 runs per day and a 100 KB page ceiling. There is no separate charge; the inference runs on our account.   Can my agent use the design pass? +  Yes, two ways. A connected agent can fetch the same design guide the one-click pass uses (GET /design-guide over the API or the design_guide MCP tool) and do the rebuild itself with its own model. Or publish plain HTML and let the human click once in the dashboard — the pass was built for exactly the page an agent ships at 5 a.m.   Does applying change the URL my client already has? +  No — that is the point of the apply button saying “Apply — same link.” The rebuild replaces content in place, so the link you already sent keeps working and simply looks better the next time it is opened.
Keep reading

## Related guides

   -  [ For developers The publish primitive, the design guide endpoint, and the standing-report pattern. ](/developers)
-  [ Every agent integration MCP, skills, n8n, connectors — the ways agents publish what the pass then polishes. ](/agents)
-  [ Share HTML with a client The delivery side: gated, branded links for the page you just made client-ready. ](/share-html-file-with-client)
-  [ Pricing The design pass is on every plan; what the plans actually meter. ](/pricing)

##  Plain page in. Client-ready page out.

 Publish free, run the pass, keep the link. No card, about a minute.

 [ Sign up free → ](https://app.stacktr.ee/?join=1&from=cta_design_pass)       Private hosting for the HTML your agents make.

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