Pencil
Verified Oct 15, 2026 ActiveDesign canvas that lives in your repo: draw a screen, get code your editor and coding agent can read
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- 100% Free
The pricing page states pen.dev is currently free and that the company will describe terms and pricing before charging if it introduces paid plans, so there is no entry price to record.
Use tool ↗About Pencil
Pencil is a design tool aimed at people who ship the code themselves. Screens are laid out on an infinite canvas, but the document is a .pen file that sits in your repository next to the source, so it versions through git rather than in a vendor's cloud workspace. It ships as a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, an extension for VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf and Antigravity, an npm CLI, and an MCP server that lets a coding agent read the canvas and write matching components. It is built by High Agency, Inc., a US startup that launched in January 2026; the pricing page says the product is free today and that paid plans would be announced before anyone is charged. The harvested domain pencil.dev redirects here.
- Platforms
- macOS · Windows · Linux · VS Code extension
- API
- Not confirmed
- Last verified
- Oct 15, 2026
Verified sources
- pencil.dev redirects to pen.dev, confirming the harvested URL's destinationpencil.dev ↗
- Pricing page states the product is currently free and names High Agency, Inc. as the copyright holderpen.dev ↗
- Download page listing macOS, Windows and Linux builds plus extensions for Cursor, VS Code, Antigravity and Windsurf and an npm CLIpen.dev ↗
Is Pencil legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- Domain registered
- Sep 10, 2025 (1 year ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar Name.com, Inc., looked up Sep 6, 2026
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Let's Encrypt, valid until Dec 9, 2026Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 15, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 15, 2026The site answered
- On the market since
- 2026The vendor's own material, read by us
- Operated by
- High Agency, Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Aug 23, 2026
Pros & cons of Pencil
The interesting decision here is storing the design as a file in the repository instead of a cloud document — it means a branch carries its own design state and a coding agent can read the canvas through MCP without an export step. That is a real answer to the handoff problem rather than another Figma-to-React exporter. It is also very new, free with no stated business model, and only worth adopting if your team already works with a coding agent in the loop.
Pros
- Canvas is a .pen file stored locally and versioned with git, not a cloud document
- Editor extension covers VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf and Antigravity rather than one IDE
- Ships an MCP server so a coding agent can read the design directly
- Native desktop builds for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows x64 and Linux, plus an npm CLI
- Free with no credit card at time of check
Cons
- No pricing at all yet, which means no commitment about what stays free
- Very young — launched January 2026, so ecosystem, plugins and file-format stability are unproven
- Local-first storage means collaboration is whatever your git workflow gives you, with no built-in review tooling
Best for
- Solo developers and small teams where the same person designs and implements
- Workflows where a coding agent generates the components and needs a design source it can read
- Projects that want design state to branch and merge with the code
Not for
- Design teams that need multiplayer editing, comments and stakeholder review — this is not a Figma replacement
- Anyone who needs a settled vendor: the product launched in 2026 and has no announced pricing
Watch out: The brand and the domain disagree — the product is called Pencil, ships as the 'pencildev' extension, but lives at pen.dev, and pencil.dev only redirects. Bookmark the destination, not the name.
Alternatives to Pencil
Pencil head-to-head
Side-by-side fact sheets against the competitors our research or their makers name — pricing, platforms, API and both verdicts on one page.