What is Penpot?
Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform for teams building digital products. Designers and developers can collaborate in real time, create responsive interfaces with CSS Grid and Flex Layout, and maintain reusable design systems through native design tokens, components and variants.
The platform works with open standards including SVG, CSS, HTML and JSON. Its inspect mode exposes design code, while an API, webhooks and plugins support automation and connections to development workflows. Penpot is available as a hosted service or can be deployed on an organization's own infrastructure. A paid Enterprise plan adds centralized administration, advanced permissions and SSO for cloud and self-hosted environments.
Penpot is licensed under MPL-2.0. Its README also describes an MCP server for workflows between design and code, and an open API and plugin system for automation and integrations.
Key capabilities
- Interface design Create responsive layouts using CSS Grid and Flex Layout.
- Design systems Manage native design tokens, reusable components and variants across projects.
- Collaboration Support real-time work between designers and developers.
- Code inspection Inspect SVG, CSS and HTML representations of designs.
- Extensibility Connect workflows through an API, access tokens, webhooks and plugins.
- Deployment Use the hosted service or self-host the platform on controlled infrastructure.
Where Penpot fits
Penpot fits product teams that need a shared environment for interface design, prototyping and developer handoff. Its design-system features support reusable UI work, while code inspection and programmable extensions connect design assets to development processes.
Before deployment, teams should check whether their access-control and administration requirements need the Enterprise plan. Self-hosting also requires an operational plan for configuration, updates and backups. The supplied standalone documentation repository is archived and marked as outdated, so installation details should be checked against the maintained documentation in the main repository.
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