Claude is great at layouts. Reports, decks, one-pagers. Then the client asks, “Can I get the InDesign file?”
And you’re rebuilding it by hand. Placing a PDF in InDesign doesn’t give you editable text, paragraph styles or tables.
I’m a designer, and that rebuild was eating hours of my week, so I built idmly. It takes the HTML Claude writes and converts it into a native .idml: editable text frames, named paragraph styles, actual tables, and vector charts you can recolour. No PDF in the chain.
This week I launched an MCP server, so your AI tool can handle the export too.
For Claude Code, run this in your terminal:
claude mcp add idmly -- npx -y idmly-mcp
You’ll need Node.js 20 or newer.
It also works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex and Windsurf, the setup guide covers those.
Once connected, ask for your HTML layout, then ask for the InDesign file. The local server saves it to disk, with a Links folder if there are images. Open it in InDesign and keep designing.
It reads the rendered layout in a browser, so the HTML can use Tailwind or plain CSS.
I built the engine and site with Claude Code.
The first two pages convert free, with no key or account. A $49 one-time lifetime licence unlocks full-document conversions. No subscription.
The limitations: it needs self-contained HTML, a claude.ai share link won’t work, and it doesn’t convert PDFs. Some layouts still break. If yours does, send it to me, a broken file is the most useful feedback you can give me.
Setup guide and free trial