Using the EDS SDK with AI coding agents

This article explains how to have an AI coding agent work on your Email Design System (EDS) through the EDS SDK.

The EDS SDK is built to work with AI coding agents, such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Gemini CLI. The agent can edit your components, check its own work and fix problems, while you stay in control of what goes live.

Before you begin

Set up a repository for your EDS. See The EDS SDK.

How the agent learns about your EDS

The EDS SDK includes an agent skill: instructions that teach an agent about Email Design Systems, field types, Liquid templates and best practices. The AGENTS.md file in your repository tells the agent to read the skill before it makes changes, so there’s nothing to install.

Open the repository in your coding agent and describe the change you want, such as “Add a testimonial component with a quote, a name and a photo”.

You can read the skill yourself with:

npx emailshepherd skills read email-design-system

You can also add your own skills with your organization’s conventions.

Choose what the agent can do on its own

Most coding agents let you choose which commands they can run without asking. We recommend:

Allow the agent to run these, so it can check and fix its own work:
Terminal window
```
npx emailshepherd validate
npx emailshepherd render
```
Require your approval for this, because it changes the live EDS:
Terminal window
```
npx emailshepherd deploy
```

See Deploy your changes for what deploying does.