What is a Design MD file?

Design MD is Google's open design system specification, written as a single Markdown file. It holds your brand colours, typography, spacing rules, logos, slide layouts, and component patterns. The file is both machine-readable (for AI agents) and human-readable (for the team). Originally created for Google's Switch app, now an open spec used by Cowork, Claude, Cursor, Gemini, and other AI agents.

How do I use Design MD with Copilot Cowork to make PowerPoint?

Upload the Design MD file plus the content you want in the deck (transcripts, outlines, notes) to a Cowork task. Prompt Cowork to create a PowerPoint following the Design MD as the brand spec. Cowork plans the deck, builds the slides, applies the styling from the Design MD, and produces a ready-to-share file. No design touch-ups needed if the Design MD is comprehensive.

Can the same Design MD be used for other content types?

Yes. Design MD is content-type agnostic. The same file works for one-pagers, reports, course slides, social posts, anything where the brand applies. Cowork (or any other AI agent that supports the Design MD spec) reads the file and applies it to whatever format the prompt asks for.

How do I create a Design MD file?

Two paths. One: write it yourself in Markdown, following the spec sections (overview, colours, typography, layout, components). Two: ask Cowork (or Claude) to interview you. Ask it to question you and write the Design MD from your answers. Cowork asks one question at a time, you answer, and the finished file appears at the end.

Can I bundle the Design MD into a reusable Cowork Skill?

Yes. Once the Design MD works for you, wrap the workflow into a Cowork Skill. The Skill bundles the Design MD as a reference file so you never have to upload it again. Calling the Skill produces the same on-brand output every time. The Skill is portable; same SKILL.md format as SharePoint Skills and Claude Skills.

Is Copilot Cowork the same as Copilot in SharePoint?

No. Cowork is Microsoft's new agentic AI workspace built in partnership with Anthropic. Copilot in SharePoint lives inside SharePoint sites. Cowork is a separate experience that can pull from SharePoint files but lives elsewhere. Both use the same open Skills format, so a Skill written for one can often be ported to the other.

Why is Cowork called a delegation tool not a chat tool?

Because the work happens autonomously. You give Cowork a task, it plans the steps, executes them, and surfaces the finished output. You do not stay in chat the whole time. Long-running tasks (build a PowerPoint, generate a dashboard, run a research summary) become things you hand off and check back on, not things you wait for in a chat window.

What if I don't have a Design MD file?

Either ask Cowork to interview you to build one (the bonus pattern in the demo) or use a generic Microsoft theme. The output is less branded without a Design MD but Cowork still produces a complete deck. You can refine the Design MD later as you see what styling Cowork applies in its absence.

Copilot Cowork + Design MD, on-brand PowerPoint in one workflow

A Copilot Cowork task plus one Markdown file produces a fully on-brand PowerPoint deck. No design touch-ups, no slide-by-slide formatting, no copying your colours into Microsoft theme settings. The Design MD does the work and the same file works for one-pagers, reports, course slides, and anything else you publish.

The 10-minute walkthrough shows the full workflow: building a course intro deck from transcripts and a Design MD, then using Cowork to interview you so it can build the Design MD itself, then wrapping everything into a Cowork Skill so the workflow is reusable.

What Design MD is

Design MD is an open specification for design systems, originally published by Google for its Switch app and now an open standard used by AI agents including Copilot Cowork, Claude, Cursor, and Gemini.

The format is a single Markdown file that holds your brand's visual identity:

Overview. The brand at a glance: name, audience, voice.
Colours. Hex codes for the primary palette, accents, neutrals, semantic colours (success, warning, error).
Typography. Font families, weights, sizes, line heights for display, body, mono, labels.
Spacing. Base unit and the rhythm of margins and padding.
Layout. Grid system, container widths, breakpoints.
Components. Buttons, cards, badges, callouts — visual rules for each.
Logo and imagery. Logo placement rules, image styling, illustration guidelines.

The file is both machine-readable (the structured Markdown is consistent enough for AI agents to parse reliably) and human-readable (your designer can edit it, your developer can read it, your marketer can verify it).

Think of it as a README for your design system. One file, readable by your team, executable by AI agents.

The workflow in the demo

The demo builds a slide deck for a new course intro. Three inputs go into a Cowork task:

The Design MD file. A Shift F5 brand Design MD with the colours, fonts, slide layouts, and component patterns for the brand.
The course content. A transcript of the course introduction plus outline notes for expectations and outcomes.
The prompt. "Create a PowerPoint presentation. I've given you the outline of a new course I'm creating and the Design MD file for you to follow. Follow the Design MD when creating the deck and use all the content from the transcripts I've given you."

Cowork takes over from there. It loads the PowerPoint skill (one of the built-in Cowork skills). It plans the deck structure based on the content. It applies the Design MD styling to every slide. It generates the file.

About two minutes after the prompt, the finished deck is available for download. The colours, fonts, logos, and slide patterns all match the Design MD. The content is structured from the source transcripts.

The user does not stay in chat during this. Cowork is delegation — give it the task, walk away, come back to the finished output.

Cowork is delegation, not chat

This is the mindset shift the demo keeps coming back to. Most Copilot interactions are chat-shaped: ask a question, get an answer, refine, ask again. Cowork breaks that pattern.

You give Cowork a task. The task takes minutes to hours (depending on complexity). Cowork plans, executes, asks for tool approvals when needed (file operations, external calls), and finishes. You check back when the task is done.

Three things change as a result:

You stop waiting. The PowerPoint generation takes two to three minutes. You do not sit watching a progress bar. You hand it off and go do something else.

Long-running tasks become viable. Tasks that would have been too tedious to do interactively (build me a dashboard from 22 files, run a 30-page research summary) now happen because you delegate them.

The team's relationship with AI changes. AI moves from a chat partner you ask questions to a colleague you hand work to. The mental model is closer to a junior team member than a search engine.

The bonus pattern: Cowork interviews you

The second half of the video shows a less obvious but more useful pattern: getting Cowork to build the Design MD itself.

The prompt:

"I want you to interview me because I want to create a custom Design MD file. This is the new design system from Google. Ask me the required questions and get enough information from me. Ask the questions one by one so that you can generate a Design MD file based on my responses."

Cowork flips into interview mode. It asks questions one at a time:

What is the brand name and what does it stand for?
What is the primary brand colour? Provide a hex code if you have one, or describe it.
What typography do you use? Display font, body font, monospace font.
What layout patterns do you use? Grid system, container widths.
What components feature in your typical content? Buttons, cards, callouts.

You answer each question in plain English. Cowork structures the answers into the Design MD format. By the end of the interview, the file exists.

For teams that have not formalised their design system, this is the fastest way to get one. The interview surfaces what you already know about the brand and structures it into a file that AI agents can consume.

Wrap the workflow into a Cowork Skill

The third pattern in the demo: rather than uploading the Design MD every time you generate a deck, wrap the whole workflow into a Cowork Skill.

The prompt:

"Create a Skill so that I don't have to upload this Design MD file over and over again. I want this Skill to incorporate the Design MD file, maybe a references folder we can call on, and that it always uses that when creating a PowerPoint presentation."

Cowork builds a Skill. The Skill bundles the Design MD as a reference file. From that point on, calling the Skill produces the on-brand deck without uploading the Design MD each time.

Same Skill format as SharePoint Skills and Claude Skills. The Skill file is plain Markdown, portable across the agent platforms. Same SKILL.md anatomy, same references folder pattern.

Where this fits with Copilot in SharePoint

Cowork and Copilot in SharePoint are siblings, not replacements. Both use the same open Skills format. Both can read files from your SharePoint sites.

Three patterns where they combine:

SharePoint hosts the content, Cowork produces the artefact. Source files (transcripts, exports, notes) live in SharePoint. Cowork pulls from SharePoint, runs the generation task, returns the finished file. Pattern documented in the SharePoint dashboard article.

Cowork wraps a SharePoint use case in a Skill. A SharePoint Skill that generates a PowerPoint can be paired with a Cowork Skill that bundles the Design MD. Either platform can run the same logic.

Design MD lives in SharePoint, accessed by Cowork. Keep the Design MD in your Agent Assets library (alongside SHAREPOINT.md and Skills). Cowork references it from SharePoint rather than from your local downloads folder.

What to do this week

If your team produces branded content regularly (decks, reports, one-pagers, social tiles), three actions.

Ask Cowork to interview you for a Design MD. Even if you do not have a formal design system, the interview surfaces what you already know about the brand. The output is a starting Design MD you can iterate.
Try one branded artefact with Cowork and the Design MD. A slide deck, a one-pager, anything. Compare the time-to-output against your current production pattern.
Wrap it into a Cowork Skill if you produce the artefact repeatedly. The Skill bundles the Design MD, and the same prompt every month or quarter produces the same shape of branded output.

For organisations rolling Copilot in SharePoint plus Cowork out together, the Copilot in SharePoint Immersive covers the SharePoint side in a day and how the two products combine in practice.