Coherent vs Marmo UI

Coherent is an AI design method for building multi-page products whose pages share components and a growing design system. It generates a Next.js project using Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui, suitable as a prototype, developer handoff, or frontend. Shared components and editable design tokens propagate changes across pages, with design-system.config.ts as the editable configuration. Users can choose from 10 prebuilt atmospheres or define their own foundation. Coherent supplies context for Cursor, Claude Code, and other AI editors through.cursorrules and CLAUDE.md files. It supports Anthropic Claude or OpenAI GPT using the user’s own API key; typical model costs are estimated at $0.01–$0.03 per page. Its MCP server can validate code, read tokens, extract a design system from a URL, or apply a DESIGN.md file. It can import DESIGN.md and export tokens as W3C DTCG JSON, CSS variables, or Tailwind configuration. Full retrofit into an existing codebase is not supported yet, and direct Figma token import is also not supported. Coherent is open source under the MIT license and available on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Marmo UI pairs an open-source React design system with a hosted MCP server to help AI agents compose dashboards and apps using named @marmoui/ui components. The server provides live component APIs, composition patterns and generation rules; generated files pass through a review step that checks imports, props and compositions. The library includes more than 50 production-ready components and comes with Storybook and a Figma library. Developers install the React package with npm. The free plan includes documentation, the design tools and MIT-licensed core components, and allows unlimited projects, commercial use and no rate limits. Pro adds generation guided by a DESIGN.md file with brand details, plus composition patterns, Pro blocks, a hosted design-system site and priority support. It costs $9.99 per month, and a 14-day trial is listed. Integration instructions cover Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Windsurf and other MCP clients. Generated code belongs to the user, uses the user’s own LLM tokens and stays in the user’s repository; it does not phone home.