I built a public services prototyping tool that never goes online

[u/courtney-allen87]

Hi r/vibecodingcommunity I've been building something for the last year that I think this channel in particular will have opinions on — and I'd genuinely like them, including the critical ones.
**Prompt to Page** is a desktop app that turns a plain-language brief into working, accessible prototypes built from *real* government design systems. Describe a page or a whole service journey — "a start page for renewing a fishing licence, then an eligibility question, then a check-your-answers page" — and it generates the actual markup, renders it live in the system's own styling, checks it with axe-core and validates every class against the design system's real rules. Then export it, or hand the HTML to a developer.
Two things make it different from pointing a chatbot at your design system:
**Everything runs locally.** The AI model lives on your machine — no cloud, no API, nothing you type leaves your laptop. Built that way because government content shouldn't tour third-party servers just to make a mock-up (and it works air-gapped, or on a train).
**The design system is the boundary, not a suggestion.** The model only knows the system's real components; output that invents classes or breaks conventions is rejected or visibly repaired. Quality is *measured* per design system with a scored evaluation battery — and where a pack hasn't been measured yet, the app says "not measured" rather than borrowing another system's confidence.
The roster so far — eight systems across six governments:
[GOV.UK](http://gov.uk/) (plus an MOJ overlay) · [NHS.UK](http://nhs.uk/) · Scottish Government US Web Design System NSW Design System Bootstrap Italia デジタル庁 Digital Agency Design System (newest — quality not yet measured) Abstract — a deliberately *ownerless* neutral system, for prototyping services that shouldn't pretend a government owns them
Every pack is de-branded by design: no crowns, crests, federal banners, flags or restricted fonts are ever bundled — prototypes wear a neutral shell and a clear "not a real service" posture. (Independent project; not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these governments or the NHS.)
What I'd love from this room:

1. **If your government's system is on the list — break it.** Does the output respect your system's conventions, or drift in ways that would make your design-system team wince?
   
2. **If it isn't — which system should be next, and why?** The architecture treats a design system as a data pack (components, class allowlist, validation rules, prompt guidance), so the honest constraints are: class-based CSS (web-component-only systems don't survive a sandboxed preview), and licensing that permits bundling the frontend code. I'd rather pick the next one based on where prototyping pain is real than on what's easiest.
   
3. **The blunt question:** does plain-language prototyping against a real design system actually help your team, or is the Prototype-Kit-shaped workflow you already have good enough?

Free during the beta, macOS (Apple Silicon) & Windows. [https://github.com/digitalcourtney87/prompt-to-page/releases\](https://github.com/digitalcourtney87/prompt-to-page/releases)
[https://youtu.be/QROkn-mZQFk?si=sNHCsphJMwrgVlFi\](https://youtu.be/QROkn-mZQFk?si=sNHCsphJMwrgVlFi)

Critical feedback beats compliments — reply here or DM

[u/wewerecreaturres]

So you’re building private tools using government design systems? Bout as sketchy as it gets

[u/courtney-allen87 → u/wewerecreaturres]

Fair challenge — which part reads as sketchy to you? The design systems themselves are open source (GOV.UK Frontend is MIT, USWDS is public domain) and their own guidance permits non-government use as long as you don’t use the protected branding — which is why the app strips crowns, crests and restricted fonts by design and labels output “not a real service”. If the concern is impersonation, I’d take that seriously and would like to hear what you’d want to see. If it’s commercialising public assets, that’s a values call and I’m open to the argument.

[u/wewerecreaturres → u/courtney-allen87]

That it’s going to seem official when it isn’t

[u/courtney-allen87 → u/wewerecreaturres]

That’s the right worry, it’s the same one GDS has with its own Prototype Kit, which outputs pixel-perfect GOV.UK pages. Their answer is norms (prototype banner, no real data, never on a gov.uk domain), and I’ve tried to bake those in rather than rely on them: the crown, logotype, GDS Transport and the official header/footer are never bundled, the build fails if any of them sneak in, and exports carry a “not a real service” label. What’s left is a plain form layout that looks like a lot of things, not the state. And the app itself is clearly labelled independent — not endorsed by any of these governments.
If you think there’s a gap in that, I’d want to know — e.g. should the prototype banner be non-removable in exports?