Cosmos: Wander and Hues
Extending the dialogue between instinct and intention for millions of users, and millions more to come.
Product Designer · Cosmos · May 2026
Context
Cosmos is redefining the way creatives see the world and draw inspiration from it.
Reading Andy McCune’s blog post on “The Future of Cosmos” it became clear to me why creatives like myself and so many others are drawn to the platform. Focus on curation, taste, and discovery with sensitivity around attribution and context. Something that was lost with the repetition and slop of the World Wide Web.
Cosmos and all its product offerings work because they’re all uniquely personal. Saving being instant, discovery being adaptable, collections reflecting YOU. No engagement bait and no forced interactions.
Opportunity
Cosmos serves a wide spectrum of users across many modes of discovery
Like many others, some days I browse and some days I curate. Some days I gather references with intent and other days I follow a feeling I can’t fully describe yet.
Instinct and Intention
As McCune describes it, Cosmos lets instinct and intention stay in dialogue. That resonated with me because it helped me understand why I trust Cosmos. The UX supports both unconscious and conscious behaviors. Saving is instant, the grid scans like the eye, and context stays close. Cosmos sides with us as humans, in the way we think, not the way the algorithm does.
And that felt like the clearest product opportunity to design around.
So with all this in mind, I started looking for areas where Cosmos could deepen that dialogue. I framed the opportunity around how the platform could further support our innate creative behaviors, from wandering freely to curating intentionally, and everything in between. I defined goals along a spectrum of instinct to intention:
Open more room to wander
Help users continue from what feels right, not just what they can describe.
Instinct
Keep instinct and intention in constant communication
Keep browsing, saving, and revisiting connected and not as separate modes.
Dialogue
Push collections to be your way
Help collections become more expressive of the feeling behind the elements.
Intention
Claude Code & LLM Integrations
Product Opportunity Hallelujah
I created custom Claude skills bespoke to Cosmos that helped me map opportunity signals from public Cosmos surfaces, reviews, and designer press into the goals above.
Research
I looked for the surfaces where instinct and intention are always at play
I used the “instinct-to-intention” spectrum as a way to read the research. Where does Cosmos already catch a user’s first reaction, and where does that reaction start turning into something more deliberate?
The clearest surfaces were Save and Collections. Save is where taste first shows up, often before the user can explain what it is. Collections are where those saved elements start taking shape aesthetically. These are the surfaces where new features could deepen the dialogue between what a user feels to what a user understands.
Save
Something stops the eye
“Something stops you before you know why. You save it.”
Art Direction Substack, 2026“Less performing, more wandering.”
The Future of Cosmos, 2026A save should be treated as a flexible signal, not a finished bookmark. It can carry instinct, intent, feeling, curiosity, memory, or taste, and the product should help the user keep exploring from that signal without forcing them to define it too early.
Collections
Collections take shape as a vision
“My collections are out of order and change when I add new elements.”
App Store Review, April 2026“Cosmos researches images—surfacing the artist, source, and story.”
Cosmos homepageA collection becomes more personal when references keep their source, context, and story attached. Allowing elements to take on the shape of whatever the user wants them to be. For creative teams, context makes inspiration easier to share, discuss, and shape together.
I also wanted to explore how Cosmos could further integrate AI into its existing stack, being useful without taking over a user’s taste. Cosmos uses AI around the elements, from tagging to visual search, find similar, and attribution. Ultimately, their use of AI defends what Cosmos stands for: human taste, held in context.
The opportunity framing and research signals narrowed the feature direction to two questions:
Question 01
How might Cosmos help someone keep exploring from a signal without them having to know exactly what they're looking for?
Question 02
Inside a growing collection, how might Cosmos help a user make sense of the aesthetic forming across their saved elements?
LLM Integrations
Grounded Research
I used Perplexity deep research to gather the source set, then brought the material into NotebookLM to test these two opportunity areas against McCunes writings, product surfaces, reviews, and press.
Principles
Respect the core principles of Cosmos
It was important to understand Cosmos deeply before designing anything. Any new feature needed to be sensitive to the product and serve purpose to what makes Cosmos, Cosmos. Through that research, I landed on a set of product, design, and AI principles I believed should guide the work.
01 / Product
Elements are the product
The interface should stay quiet so the elements are primary.
02 / Product
Context travels with images
Sources, creators, and context need to stay close to the elements.
03 / Product
Collections express taste
A collection should be defined by whatever the user wants it to be.
04 / Design
Speak the same language
Elements, saves, similar, color search, source context, collections, etc. already define the product grammar.
05 / Design
Intentional interaction
Simple precise controls, tight grids, neutrals, light borders, and low-drama motion felt most like Cosmos
06 / Design
Ease of use
Avoid complicated user flows that pull attention away from the elements.
AI should defend taste, and exist tastefully.
I needed a clear boundary for how AI could exist in Cosmos without weakening what makes it trusted. Reading McCune’s interviews and writing, there was a clear stance on how AI could help with context and discovery, but only if the user stayed in control. Any integration needed to stay grounded in the product and design principles we highlighted.
01 / AI
No new pixels
AI can research, classify, retrieve, and de-rank, but it should not generate, remix, or author imagery on the user's behalf.
02 / AI
Human intent stays upstream
The user's save, collection, taste, and judgment remain the input. AI clarifies possibilities without deciding the creative direction.
03 / AI
Context stays attached
Source, artist, date, and AI-content status travel with the image, and user AI-content preferences remain honored.
Claude Code & LLM Integrations
AI as a thought partner
There’s a risk of confirmation bias in a self-directed case like this. Skills and thinking patterns from obra/superpowers helped me validate my research and scope my features thoughtfully.
Feature: Wander
Wander helps you follow feelings and chase taste
Wander is for the moment when something feels right but you cannot fully describe why yet. It lets someone follow an instinct, a mood, or a loose visual thread without forcing that feeling into a thought.
By living inside the Element screen, Wander adds context without adding friction. It keeps the user present in the moment of discovery while helping them understand the path their taste is starting to take.
As an AI-driven feature, it shows how Cosmos could expand its AI stack in a way that supports discovery, context, and curation without taking over the creative decision. A thinking partner of sorts.
Feature: Hues
Hues explores how saved elements can reveal the aesthetic direction of a growing collection.
Hues gives users a visual way to organize elements by creative intent without turning curation into complex management. I used the new Adidas Backyard Legends campaign to show how Hues shapes elements into a clearer creative direction.
Adding a hue as collections grow and aesthetics emerge
As collections grow, assigning Hues should feel as instinctive as saving an Element. By assigning Hues, users can see the shape of their collection more clearly. Which elements belong together, where contrast creates tension, and what aesthetic is beginning to emerge.
Whether a team is gathering cinematic references for a short film or a user is making sense of everything gathered during a long browsing session, Hues removes the friction of management and, again, keeps the focus on discovery.
Final Design
Instinct and Intention never stop talking
The final design shows how discovery can begin with instinct and become intentional over time, starting from one saved element and building toward a clearer creative direction.
Next Steps
Looking forward, I would start by letting elements assign more than one Hue as elements can often share a feeling, point of view, or visual direction across categories. I would also spend more time on custom Wandering and how image search actually works, what Cosmos can infer from elements, and where the system needs human intent to steer it. My limited view into the Cosmos infrastructure kept that exploration lighter than I wanted. And of course design these features for the mobile application as well.
CLAUDE DESIGN, FIGMA, CODEX, & MORE
Idea to Prototype
I used Claude Design and Claude Code to build Cosmos’s foundational UI, Figma MCP to iterate on screens and map user flows, then Codex to turn the designs into working prototypes for Wander and Hues. Select design skills kept decisions grounded throughout the process.
Retrospective
Design is personal, Design serves purpose
Designing for Cosmos felt refreshing because the product is rooted in personality and taste. The dedication Cosmos has to being extremely intentional, not just in design but across its entire product offering, is what makes it so special. AI has raised the ceiling for what can be explored, but great product design respects a product’s core values and can tune out the noise of a million ideas to create something purposeful. In other words, great design is opinionated.
Approaching this work with humility is what allowed me to see it through. Being aware of what Cosmos serves for its users. Being aware of why Cosmos makes the decisions it does. And being aware of what belongs. Just like Cosmos, context is everything. And that’s how I’ll approach designing for years to come.