Section 1
Why every AI website looks the same
You know the look. Purple gradient. Centered headline. Three feature cards with little icons. A "Get Started" button. Every AI-built site lands there because you asked it to design something and gave it zero taste to work with, so it gave you the average of the internet.
Two things fix it:
Show it your taste
Screenshots of real websites you like, plus one sentence on what you like about each. That's the input that kills the slop.
Design first, code later
Paper is a design canvas Claude can see and draw on. Claude designs the site visually, you both look at it, you fix it, and only then does anyone write code. Changing a design takes seconds. Changing code takes way longer.
Section 2
The setup (about 5 minutes)
Download Paper Desktop
Grab it at paper.design/downloads, sign in, and create a new file. Name it after your project. The connection to Claude only runs while Paper is open with a file loaded, so keep it open while you work.
Connect it to Claude (one click)
In Paper, open the MCP panel and click Add to Claude. That connects Paper to both the Claude app and Claude Code. Confirm the install when Claude asks, then restart Claude.
If you use Claude Code in the terminal and the button doesn't work, run this instead:
claude plugin marketplace add paper-design/agent-plugins && claude plugin install paper-desktop@paper
Check it worked: in Claude Code, type /mcp and look for Paper in the list. Full docs at paper.design/docs/mcp.
Install GoFullPage (Chrome extension)
Your normal screenshot only grabs what's on screen. Claude needs the whole page, top to bottom. Install GoFullPage, click the icon on any site, and it captures the full thing.
Section 3
Build your inspiration board
This is the step that decides whether you get slop or something that looks expensive. Spend more time here than on anything else.
Pick 3 to 6 websites. Under 3 and the result looks generic. Way more than 6 and Claude blends your taste into mush.
Where to find them:
- The best-looking businesses in your industry. Search your service plus a big city and click around.
- Land-book and Godly. Huge galleries of well-designed sites.
- Sites from totally different industries. A coffee brand's homepage can be the perfect reference for a roofing company. That's how you end up with a site nobody in your niche has.
You don't need to love the whole site. You need to love one thing about it. The headline from one, the photo grid from another, the dark section from a third. Mixing is what makes it yours instead of a copy.
Write one specific sentence per site. Not "I like this one." Try "the only color on the page is the button" or "the reviews sit in a dark band in the middle." The more specific you are here, the better every design comes out.
Then capture each one with GoFullPage and drag the screenshots onto your Paper canvas, side by side, left to right. Keep your notes in the same order. That's your board.
Section 4
The prompt: 5 website designs in one shot
Open Claude (the app or Claude Code) with Paper open in the background. Copy this, fill in the brackets, and send it. Then watch Claude draw 5 different websites on your canvas in real time.
The 5-variant prompt
Use the Paper MCP. Open my Paper file "[FILE NAME]" and look at everything on the canvas before you design anything. I dropped [NUMBER] screenshots of websites I like onto the board. Screenshot each one, study it, and tell me in one line what you see in it before you start. Here's what I like about each reference (left to right): 1. [Site name]: [What you like, specifically. Example: "The giant headline and how the only color on the whole page is the button."] 2. [Site name]: [Example: "The dark section in the middle. It breaks up the page and makes the reviews pop."] 3. [Site name]: [Example: "The photo cards with the label in the bottom-left corner and a little arrow in the bottom-right."] 4. [Site name]: [Example: "The nav. Tiny, all caps, one black button on the right."] (Add or delete lines so it matches the number of screenshots on your board.) What I'm building: - Business: [Name + one sentence. Example: "Northside Detailing, a mobile car detailing company in Tampa."] - Who it's for: [Example: "Busy car owners within 30 minutes of downtown Tampa."] - The ONE thing I want visitors to do: [Example: "Book a detail" or "Request a free quote."] - My current site (pull real copy from it, no lorem ipsum): [URL, or "none yet, write the copy for me"] - Things I never want to see: [Example: "Purple gradients, stock photos of people pointing at laptops, the word 'solutions'."] Now design 5 different homepage variants as 5 separate 1440px-wide artboards, side by side on the same page. Rules: - Don't clone any single reference. Every variant mixes elements from at least 2 of them, and every element I said I liked shows up in at least one variant. - Make the 5 genuinely different from each other: different mood, colors, fonts, and layout. If two look like siblings, redo one. - Before you build each variant, give it a name and write me a 3-line brief: the mood, the colors (hex codes), and the fonts. - Every homepage needs: nav, a hero with my main call to action, proof (reviews, logos, or numbers), what I do, why me or how it works, a final call to action, and a footer. - Write real copy for my business. Short sentences. No buzzwords. - Build each variant section by section. When you finish one, screenshot it and fix anything cramped, cut off, misaligned, or hard to read before moving on. When all 5 are done, give me a short list: each variant's name, its vibe in 5 words, and which references it borrowed from. Then stop and wait for my feedback. Don't write any code yet.
Why 5 and not 1
One design forces you to say yes or no. Five lets you point. You'll look at them and instantly know "that hero, those colors, that reviews section." Picking is way easier than describing.
Talk it, don't type it
Use a voice-to-text app like Wispr Flow to ramble through what you like about each site. You'll say way more useful stuff out loud than you'd ever type.
Section 5
You won't get the perfect design in one go
That's not the goal. The first round is a menu. The goal is to find enough pieces you love, then fine-tune them with Claude inside Paper until it's right. All of this happens before a single line of code exists, which is exactly why it's fast.
Here's the loop, round by round.
Round 2: Frankenstein your favorites
Pick the 2 you like most and stitch the best parts together.
Combine prompt
I like [VARIANT A] and [VARIANT B] the most. Leave all 5 on the canvas, but make a new artboard to the right called "v2" that combines them: - Take the [SECTION, example: "hero and nav"] from [VARIANT A] - Take the [SECTION, example: "reviews section and the dark footer"] from [VARIANT B] - Use the colors and fonts from [VARIANT A or B] - Change: [Example: "the headline is too long, cut it to 6 words or less" or "make the quote button way bigger"] Screenshot v2 when you're done, tell me what you changed, and wait for feedback.
Round 3: Leave comments right on the design
This is the move most people don't know about. In Paper, drop comments directly on the parts you want changed ("this headline is too long," "make this button orange," "move the reviews higher"). Claude can read your Paper comments. One prompt and it fixes all of them.
Comments prompt
I left comments directly on the "[ARTBOARD NAME]" artboard in Paper. Read every open comment thread, make each change, then mark each comment resolved. When you're done, screenshot the artboard and give me a one-line summary per comment of what you changed.
Round 4: Make the phone version
Most of your visitors are on their phone. Don't skip this.
Mobile prompt
The "[ARTBOARD NAME]" artboard is the final desktop design. Build the mobile version as a new 390px-wide artboard right next to it. Same content, same colors, same fonts. Stack everything into one column, make every button easy to tap with a thumb, keep my phone number and main call to action visible at the top, and make sure no text is smaller than 16px. Screenshot it and fix anything that feels cramped.
Tips that save you hours
Be specific or get the same thing back
"Make it better" gets you a second draft of the same problem. "Cut the headline to 6 words and make the button twice as big" gets fixed in one shot.
Fix tiny stuff by hand
Paper is a real design tool. If one word is wrong or a box needs to move a little, just click it and change it yourself. Save Claude for the bigger changes.
Never start over
If round 3 is 80% there, fix the 20%. Starting from scratch throws away everything Claude already learned about your taste in the chat.
Swap in your real photos early
Drag your own photos onto the canvas and tell Claude "use these photos in the hero and the work section." Real photos of your real work beat stock every time, for looks and for trust.
Keep the losers on the canvas
Don't delete the variants you passed on. Three rounds from now you might want the footer from one of them.
Section 6
Turn the design into a live website
Once the desktop and phone designs are locked, now you write code. Open Claude Code (Paper still open) and send this. Claude reads the exact colors, fonts, and spacing straight out of Paper, so the live site matches the design instead of being "close enough."
Design-to-website prompt
Use the Paper MCP. Read the "[DESKTOP ARTBOARD NAME]" and "[MOBILE ARTBOARD NAME]" artboards in my Paper file "[FILE NAME]". Turn them into a real website: - Build it as an Astro site in a new folder called [FOLDER NAME, example: "my-website"]. - Pull exact values from Paper (get_jsx, get_computed_styles, get_fill_image). Never guess sizes or colors from a screenshot. - Desktop matches the desktop artboard, phones match the mobile artboard, and everything in between still looks clean. - One H1 per page. Every image gets alt text that describes it. Compress every image. - Make the contact form actually work and tell me what I need to set up for it. Then walk me through putting it live step by step. Assume I have never used GitHub or Vercel before: create the GitHub repo, push the code, connect it to Vercel, and connect my domain [DOMAIN, or "I don't have one yet"].
What you'll need: a free GitHub account (where your code lives), a free Vercel account (what puts it on the internet), and a domain if you want your own URL. Claude walks you through the rest.
After that, every change works the same way: tell Claude what to change, it updates the code, pushes it, and your live site updates in about a minute.
Section 7
The SEO sauce: turn your site into a lead machine
A pretty site with no traffic is a business card nobody picks up. When I rebuilt a friend's local business website, the new design paired with this exact SEO setup brought him 20 new leads in a month without a dollar of paid ads.
Here's the whole checklist. It's simple. Most businesses just never do it.
One page per service
Google ranks pages, not websites. One "Services" page that lists everything ranks for nothing. A page called "Ceramic Coating in Tampa" can rank for "ceramic coating tampa." Serve multiple cities? Your biggest one or two can get their own pages too.
Service + city in every page title
The formula: [Service] in [City] | [Brand], under 60 characters. That title is the blue link people click on Google. Write the description under it (under 155 characters) like a tiny ad.
Every page has one job
Tap-to-call phone number in the header of every page. A short quote form near the top of every service page, not buried at the bottom. Reviews right next to the button. Fewer form fields means more people fill it out: name, phone, what they need.
Tell Google exactly who you are
Add "LocalBusiness schema" to your site. It's a hidden block of code with your name, address, phone, hours, and service area. Claude writes it in seconds. Make it match your Google Business Profile word for word.
Google Business Profile, fully filled out
Free at business.google.com. Link it to your new site, pick the right categories, upload real photos, and ask every happy customer for a review. For local businesses, this is where a huge chunk of calls come from.
Make it fast
Run your site through PageSpeed Insights. Aim for 90+ on mobile. Huge uncompressed photos are the usual problem. Paste the report into Claude and say "fix everything on this list."
Tell Google you exist
Set up Google Search Console (free), verify your site, and submit your sitemap. Otherwise you're waiting for Google to stumble onto you.
Replacing an old site? Redirect every old link
If your old site had pages Google already knew about, point every old URL to the matching new page with a 301 redirect. Skip this and you throw away whatever rankings the old site earned.
Don't want to do it by hand? Open Claude Code in your website folder and send this. It does items 1 through 4, 6, and 8 in the code, then tells you what's left for you.
Local SEO prompt
Act as a local SEO specialist. Go through my website code and set it up to bring in leads from Google. Ask me anything you need before you start (services, cities, phone, address, hours). My business: [NAME] What I sell: [Example: "Mobile car detailing, ceramic coating, interior deep cleans"] Where my customers are: [Example: "Tampa, St. Petersburg, Brandon, Clearwater"] How leads reach me: [Example: "Phone calls and the quote form"] Do all of this: 1. Make one page per service. Each page targets one search like "[service] in [city]". 2. Write every page title as "[Service] in [City] | [Brand]" under 60 characters, and a meta description under 155 characters that ends with a reason to click. 3. Exactly one H1 per page that says what I do and where. 4. Put my phone number as a tap-to-call link in the header of every page, and a short quote form near the top of every service page. 5. Add LocalBusiness schema (JSON-LD) with my exact name, address, phone, hours, and service area. It must match my Google Business Profile word for word. 6. Generate a sitemap and a robots.txt. 7. Compress every image, add descriptive alt text, and get the mobile PageSpeed score to 90 or higher. 8. If I'm replacing an old site, set up 301 redirects from every old URL to the new matching page. When you're done, give me a checklist of what you changed and a list of what I still have to do by hand outside the code (Google Business Profile, Search Console, reviews).
The AI Course
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