Frequently asked questions

Palate is a hosted MCP server that feeds AI website builders (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, v0, Lovable) the taste and craft of 268 deeply-analysed real websites. Instead of your agent defaulting to generic layouts and stock patterns, it gets structured design intelligence: facets, inner-page depth, do/don't rules, component prompts, and extracted design tokens.

Mobbin and Refero are visual libraries for human designers. Palate is built for machines. Every reference is structured data your AI agent can reason over: layout facets, typography systems, colour tokens, motion patterns, and explicit do/don't guidance. It is not a screenshot browser; it is a design intelligence layer that plugs directly into your build workflow via MCP.

The free plan gives you 25 enriched requests per day, full access to the reference library, and all MCP tools. Search is always available. It is enough to ground a real project and see the difference Palate makes before upgrading.

One line in your terminal. For Claude Code: claude mcp add palate --url https://mcp.palatemcp.com --header "Authorization: Bearer plt_live_...". For Cursor or Windsurf, add the equivalent JSON block to your MCP config. Sign up at app.palatemcp.com to get your token.

Palate exposes ten refs_* tools: refs_search (find references by vertical, page type, or style), refs_get (deep read of a single reference), refs_for_business (match by business description), refs_match_brief (match a creative brief), refs_similar (find visually similar sites), refs_insights (corpus-wide patterns), refs_get_tokens (extracted design tokens), refs_get_screenshot (captured screenshots), refs_get_astro_recipe (Astro implementation guidance), and refs_list_verticals (browse the collection).

Yes. Palate is a standard MCP server. Any agent or IDE that speaks the Model Context Protocol can connect. Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and similar tools work today. For hosted builders like v0 and Lovable, you can feed Palate output into your prompts manually until they add native MCP support.

Each reference carries explicit do/don't rules and component prompts. These tell your agent what to borrow, what to avoid, and how to adapt specific components to your project. It is the difference between showing your agent a screenshot and giving it structured craft guidance it can act on.

Sign in at app.palatemcp.com, go to Billing, and choose Pro. Your existing token keeps working with the higher limits immediately. Pro gives you unlimited requests, design token extraction, priority support, and team sharing.

Your API token is hashed with SHA-256 and a server pepper before storage. The plaintext is shown once when you create it and never stored. All requests run over HTTPS. Palate does not store your prompts, your code, or any data about your projects. The MCP server is read-only: it serves reference data, nothing else.