Claude Design + Claude Code: Build Instagram Carousels That Stop the Scroll (5 Levels)

Most AI carousels look like AI carousels. The slides are clean, the text is fine, and nobody stops scrolling. This guide walks through the five-level path we use to get past that, from a plain first draft to a branded, structured carousel whose cover slide is a looping video. Every level fixes one specific weakness in the level before it, so you can stop at any rung and still have something better than where you started.

Three pieces do the work, and it helps to know the job of each before you open anything. Claude Code in the desktop app is the workshop, because it can see your project folder, read the images you save there, and run setup tasks for you. Claude Design is the layout tool that lives inside it. You open it by switching the Code toggle on, opening a project folder, and typing /design in the chat. It produces editable slides, not a flat picture, so you can change any slide after the fact.

The third piece is an image generator. Claude Design builds its visuals out of code, so it cannot give you a real photograph. For that we connect Higgsfield, which is a pay-per-credit service that exposes image models such as Nano Banana Pro and GPT Image through an API. You only need it from Level 3 onward, so levels 1 and 2 cost nothing extra.

Make one new folder for the whole project. Every reference screenshot, every generated image and every finished slide set goes into it. Claude Code can only use what is in that folder, and a single home for assets is what lets the later levels build on the earlier ones.

The first level is deliberately naive. Open Claude Design and describe what you want in one plain paragraph: who the account belongs to, what the carousel teaches, and a style anchor. Our version was a fitness coach, a proper squat, and the phrase in the style of Nike.

The result is nine editable slides with sensible text and a tidy layout. It also has no imagery at all, and it looks like every other generated carousel. That is the point of running it first. You now have a baseline you can see, and every later change has something honest to be measured against.

The fork at this level is how much to describe. A longer description does not rescue the output, because the missing ingredient is not detail, it is taste. A brand name as a style anchor gives Claude a vague mood and nothing it can copy precisely. We recommend keeping the Level 1 prompt short and spending your effort on Level 2 instead.

Open Pinterest and search for Instagram carousels. Scroll until one makes you stop. Screenshot it and save the file into the project folder. Then ask Claude to study the image closely before it touches anything: the overall look, the aesthetic, the text treatment, and the imagery. Only after that analysis do you ask it to remake the carousel.

The order matters. If you skip straight to the remake, Claude copies the surface and misses the system underneath. Making it describe the reference first forces it to name the rules it is about to follow, such as how large the headline is against the body text, or where the empty space sits.

Expect a split result. The colors and typography now match the reference closely, which is a big step up from Level 1. The imagery is still wrong, because Claude Design can only draw with code, so photographs become flat shapes. That gap is exactly what Level 3 closes.

Real photography needs an image model. In Higgsfield you create an API key, then hand it to Claude Code and ask it to set up your Higgsfield API. Claude handles the connection and the first test image. Nano Banana Pro and GPT Image are the two models we reach for, and credits are charged per generation, so the cost stays proportional to what you make.

Now start a new chat and give Claude two jobs in one request. First, turn your reference screenshot into a design system for carousels. Second, generate the squat carousel in that style. Doing both together keeps the images consistent with the system as it is being written.

Our first batch was a chair, a piano, a mailbox, a balloon and a ladder, all in brand orange with a low-contrast, surreal feel. The look was strong, but it did not fit our themes, so we asked for something more futuristic, with technology and AI robots. The lesson is that the first batch is a draft of the taste, not the final answer, and asking for a direction change costs one more round of credits.

The design system that comes out of this is the real prize. Ours is built around one idea, a calm photo with one loud word. It holds a few specific things:

• The film look: grainy, analog, with generous empty space around the subject.
• The palette, kept to a few colors so every slide belongs to the same family.
• The typography rules, including when to use big bold colored words and when to switch to italics with underlines.
• A set of reference scenes that show Claude what a good image looks like in this world.

It also yields a style block you can append to any image prompt. That block is what keeps slide four looking like slide one. Write the style once, then reuse it on every image you ever generate for the account.

A beautiful carousel can still lose, because the order of the slides decides whether people swipe to the end and save it. At this level we borrow a structure from a creator whose carousels we admire, Kallaway, which we call the dopamine ladder. Each rung gives the reader a small reward for continuing.

The ladder has a fixed shape, and you can run it by hand without any tool:

1. 1The cover makes a promise and names the framework, so the reader knows what they are about to get.
2. 2The map slide shows the whole framework at a glance, which is the reason to keep swiping.
3. 3Steps one to three (and sometimes four) deliver the first wins in quick succession.
4. 4The turn lands about two thirds of the way through and reframes everything before it.
5. 5The remaining steps pay off the reframe.
6. 6The final slide asks the reader to comment a single word, which is the call to action.

To apply it, screenshot a carousel whose structure you like and ask Claude to remake yours in that format. Tell it to keep your design system and your concept. The structure comes from one image, and the look and the topic stay yours.

The turn is the rung people skip. A carousel without it reads as a list. With a turn, the reader feels the argument change direction, and that feeling is what makes them save the post to come back to it.

Instagram carousels accept video, and a moving first slide is the cheapest attention gain on the platform, since the feed is otherwise a wall of stills. We turn the cover into a six second perfect loop. For the squat carousel that was a man squatting in a field, ending exactly where he began so the repeat is invisible.

The loop is the whole trick. If the last frame does not match the first, the viewer sees a jump and the spell breaks. Ask for a clip that returns to its starting pose, and check the seam before you export.

Finally, package everything into a skill. A skill is a saved set of instructions Claude Code can reuse, so the work from all five levels becomes one repeatable step. You give it any topic, and it generates every slide in your brand style, in the dopamine ladder order, with a looping video as the first slide. The skill itself is something we share inside the club, but you now know every ingredient it contains, so you can assemble a version yourself from this guide.

Look back at what actually moved the result between levels. Level 1 used words and got a generic carousel. Level 2 used a single screenshot and got the right colors and type. Level 4 used a second screenshot and got the right order. Neither screenshot was explained with a long prompt. An image carries more instructions than a paragraph can, and Claude can read all of them.

This generalizes beyond carousels. Whenever you can show instead of tell, show. Describing a style in words invites Claude to average everything it has ever seen. Pointing at one specific example narrows the answer to a single look. We split the brief into two images on purpose: one for appearance and one for structure. Mixing both jobs into one reference confuses which part to copy.

The same logic explains why the structure matters more than the pictures. In our first carousel in this style, the structure and the design system did the heavy lifting, and it reached about 4,500 views, 228 interactions and 89 saves at the time we filmed. It now sits at 5,084 views and 106 saves. The saves are the telling number, because people only save a post that delivers on its promise.

Here is how the finished squat carousel came together, using only the steps above.

• Cover: the line You're probably squatting wrong, over a calm photo with one loud word. The cover is the looping video of a man squatting in a field.
• Map slide: all six steps of the squat shown at once, so the reader sees the whole framework before the first step.
• Steps one to four: the setup and safety steps, each with one short instruction and one calm image.
• The turn: Steps 1-4 make it safe. Steps 5-6 make it strong. This single line is where the carousel stops being a checklist and becomes a point of view.
• Steps five and six: the strength steps that pay off the turn.
• Final slide: a comment-this-word call to action.

Notice what the reader gets at each point. The cover creates a mild challenge. The map promises an end. The first steps deliver quick wins. The turn adds a reason to keep going. The last two steps cash it in. Every slide has one job, and none of them repeats another.

Each level has a predictable failure, and recognizing it saves a round of credits.

• Level 1 gives a generic carousel. The fix is not a longer prompt, it is a reference image.
• Level 2 gets the look right but the imagery wrong. That is a limit of code-drawn visuals, so move to generated images instead of fighting it.
• Level 3 produces images that do not match each other. The fix is to append the same style block to every image prompt.
• Level 4 produces a list with no energy. The fix is to check that the turn slide exists and sits about two thirds in.
• Level 5 produces a visible jump when the video repeats. The fix is to regenerate until the last frame matches the first.

One more problem cuts across all of them: drift. After many edits in one long chat, Claude starts forgetting earlier decisions. Starting a fresh chat with the design system saved in the project folder fixes it, because the rules are then in a file and not in memory.

Here is the shortest honest path from finishing this page to having a carousel you can post.

1. 1Create a project folder and open it in the Claude Code desktop app with the Code toggle on.
2. 2Pick one topic and run the Level 1 draft in Claude Design so you have a baseline.
3. 3Find one Pinterest carousel whose look you love, screenshot it, and save it in the folder.
4. 4Ask Claude to analyze the screenshot deeply, then remake your carousel from it.
5. 5Create a Higgsfield API key, give it to Claude Code, and have it set up the connection.
6. 6In a new chat, turn the reference into a design system and generate your images with the shared style block.
7. 7Screenshot a carousel with a structure you like and ask Claude to remake yours in that order, keeping your system and topic.
8. 8Turn the cover into a six second loop, check the seam, and post.

Do it once by hand before you ask for a skill. A skill automates a process you understand, and understanding it is what lets you fix the output when it drifts.