MCP design prompts that work with Gradiently

Good MCP design prompts for Gradiently name four things: the format, the words, the brand or Mark the design should wear, and where it will be posted. Once Gradiently is connected to ChatGPT, Claude or any assistant that supports remote MCP servers, a request like “Make a portrait Instagram post for Crumb Café, headline Sourdough is back” comes back as a real design that opens in your Studio, ready to edit or export. Below are prompts you can copy, grouped by job, and the habits that make them work.

What a connected assistant can reach

Prompts only work for things the connection allows. An owner or admin creates a scoped API key in Settings › API and agents, ticks the permissions it needs and adds it to the assistant; connecting an AI assistant walks through it, and what MCP is explains the protocol in plain words. After that, these are the jobs you can ask for.

The shape of a design prompt that works

Assistants are good at filling gaps, which is exactly the problem: every gap you leave is a guess. Give the facts you care about and let it decide the rest. A useful order is format, brand, words, then one instruction about emphasis.

Make a portrait Instagram post (1080×1350)
for the Crumb Café brand, on its primary Mark.
Headline: Sourdough is back.
Small line above: From Saturday
Detail: Baked at 7, gone by noon
Keep the headline short and high on the page.

Name the brand exactly as it appears in your brand switcher. The assistant reads that brand’s profile, so the voice, fonts and Mark come with it, and you don’t need to describe the look every time. If the profile is thin, brand guidelines your AI assistant can follow shows what to put in it.

Prompts for finding a Mark

Marks are the living backgrounds every Gradiently design wears. The Market search understands names, colour words such as “deep teal” and codes typed without dots, so the assistant can shortlist for you while you get on with the words.

Find five dark Marks in deep teal and give me each one’s code,
with a line on why it would suit a calm accountancy brand.

Look up GR·K7Q2·MX and describe its colours, material and type voice.

Which Marks does our Harbour brand use, and which is its primary?

Compare three warm, light Marks for a café. Which keeps words
most readable on a portrait post?

Prompts for making designs

Ask for one design at a time while you are learning how an assistant handles your brand. Give real sizes when the format matters; Gradiently knows every common platform size, so “Instagram story” or “A4 poster” is enough, but stating the pixels removes any doubt.

Make an Instagram story for Crumb Café announcing late opening
on Fridays until 9pm. Keep the words in the middle of the frame.

Make an A4 poster (2480×3508) for our open studio on 14 November.
Headline first, then date, time and address in a smaller line.

Make a LinkedIn post (1200×1200) for Harbour Accounts:
“Your tax return, done by January.” Calm, no exclamation marks.

Start from a menu template and fill it with these six dishes and prices.

You don’t need to ask for boxes, shadows or outlines behind the words. A Mark knows where the text sits: its calmest region moves behind it, and Auto ink picks light or dark type line by line. Asking for a plate behind the headline usually makes the design look worse. Auto ink explains how it works.

Prompts for changing and resizing designs

Edits work best when they point at one thing. Refer to the design by what it says or when it was made, and name the change. Resizing saves new copies beside the original, which stays as it was.

In yesterday’s Sourdough post, change the detail line to
“Baked at 7, gone by 11”.

Make the headline on the open studio poster one size smaller.

Take the Sourdough post and make an Instagram story,
an X post and a Facebook cover from it.

Switch the late opening story to our second Mark and keep everything else.

Prompts for a whole campaign

For a launch or a season, a short chain of prompts beats one enormous request. You check the first design, and everything after it inherits a look you have already approved.

1. 1

   Give the brief

   “We open a second shop in Leith on 3 December. Audience: locals who already know us. Tone: warm, plain.”

2. 2

   Ask for the anchor design

   “Make the main portrait post first. Headline: Leith, we’re coming.”

3. 3

   Review it yourself

   Open it in the Studio. Fix anything by hand or ask for one change at a time.

4. 4

   Ask for the set

   “Now make a story, a LinkedIn post and an A5 flyer from it, same words.”

5. 5

   Ask for the follow-ups

   “Make a countdown story for one week before, and an opening day post.”

If you work in Claude or ChatGPT every day, designing with Claude and designing with ChatGPT cover each assistant’s quirks in more depth.

Credits, and when the Designer gets involved

When your connected assistant lays out a design itself with Gradiently’s tools, it spends no Gradiently AI credits; the thinking happens on your assistant’s own plan. If you ask it to hand the job to Gradiently’s Designer instead, for example “ask the Gradiently Designer to make this”, that work is measured in credits, exactly as it would be in the Studio. AI credits explained has the detail.