---
title: "Inside the National Design Studio: a small White House team, a three-year clock and a government-wide redesign"
summary: "The National Design Studio is a small White House team created by executive order in August 2025 to redesign how Americans use government websites. A year in, it has shipped more than a dozen sites and tools, and it faces questions about accessibility, tracking software and spending."
description: "How Joe Gebbia's National Design Studio started, who is on the team, what it has shipped, the criticism, and lessons for startups and studios."
section: "Spotlight"
published: 2026-10-17T19:04:09.000Z
modified: 2026-10-17T19:04:09.000Z
canonical: https://builtbynpcs.com/stories/national-design-studio-trumprx-america-gov-team-lessons
publisher: "Built by NPCs"
disclosure: "Our team picks every story and reviews it before it goes out; AI helps with research and drafting."
topics: ["National Design Studio", "Joe Gebbia", "TrumpRx", "America.gov", "Government tech"]
---

# Inside the National Design Studio: a small White House team, a three-year clock and a government-wide redesign

On 29 September 2026, America.gov went live as a single AI front door to about 29,000 federal websites, built by a team most people had never heard of. The National Design Studio, an office inside the White House that works like a startup, also built TrumpRx.gov and the federal retirement application, and was the first production user of Cloudflare's vinext, a Next.js alternative. This is how it started, who is on it, what it has shipped, what the evidence says and what other builders can take from it.

:::bookmark url="https://ndstudio.gov/about" title="About the National Design Studio"
The studio's own account of its mission, its team and its first year, with a photo gallery from inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
:::

First of Kind's interview with Gebbia, linked from the studio's own news page, was shot on the White House grounds. Chapters cover the retirement problem, the Julie prototype, building the team and why trust runs through design.

[First of Kind: Joe Gebbia, Designer-in-Chief](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDsNVDKCb9I)

:::stats source="TrumpRx drug count per the Congressional Research Service and the White House, America.gov per Nextgov, studio life per Reuters; October 2026"
- 800+ | drugs listed on TrumpRx by June 2026
- ~29,000 | federal websites behind America.gov
- 3 years | the studio's life under the executive order
:::

## How they started

On 21 August 2025, President Trump signed an executive order called America by Design. It created the National Design Studio and a chief design officer role, and gave Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia the job. The order told agencies to produce initial results by 4 July 2026 and set the studio to close three years after signing. Per Reuters, an official called it a stripped-down successor to DOGE.

Gebbia's route there ran through the Office of Personnel Management. After joining DOGE in 2025, he worked on federal retirement, then pitched the design role himself, he told [Dezeen](https://www.dezeen.com/2025/11/18/america-first-chief-design-officer-joe-gebbia-interview/). He says the idea began when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked him to improve Recreation.gov. He reports to the White House chief of staff, works from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and compares the effort to Nixon's 1972 Federal Design Improvement Program. His first target was the roughly ten websites that about half the country visits each month.

:::timeline title="The studio's run so far"
- 2025-06-02 | retire.opm.gov goes live, and almost every agency is on it by 4 August.
- 2025-08-21 | The America by Design order creates the studio.
- 2025-10 | The studio begins managing techforce.gov.
- 2026-01-07 | realfood.gov accompanies the new Dietary Guidelines briefing.
- 2026-02-05 | TrumpRx.gov launches with 43 drugs.
- 2026-02-24 | Cloudflare launches vinext and says the studio runs it on the CIO.gov beta.
- 2026-04-14 | 250.gov launches as the studio's first AI experience on a government site.
- 2026-05-04 | Peter Arnell is named the first Chief Brand Architect.
- 2026-05-18 | TrumpRx adds about 600 generics, then 160 more drugs on 5 June.
- 2026-06-22 | The studio open-sources Rampart, an on-device privacy filter.
- 2026-09-28 | Cloudflare ships vinext 1.0.
- 2026-09-29 | America.gov launches as an AI front door to federal information.
:::

## Who is on the team

The studio's [about page](https://ndstudio.gov/about) says its designers, engineers, researchers and writers left Apple, Nike, Google, Meta, Airbnb and others, and that none expected to work in government. Names on the record include:

- Joe Gebbia, Airbnb co-founder and a Rhode Island School of Design graduate. He later founded the modular housing company Samara and sat on boards including Tesla's.
- Peter Arnell, a branding executive and founder of Arnell Group, named in May 2026 to lead the redesign of about 27,000 federal sites.
- Yat Choi and Dennis Li, the two engineers behind retire.opm.gov. Choi spent a decade at Airbnb, and Li came from startups in manufacturing and AI.
- Edward Coristine and Tai Groot, who wrote the Rampart release. Coristine is a former DOGE staffer, and Nextgov reports the studio includes former DOGE employees.

The studio describes itself as running like a startup inside the federal government. Its [American Forge](https://forge.ndstudio.gov) page, which recruits engineers for a six-month residency run with the AI coding company Cognition, says it has little patience for bureaucracy, endless meetings or work that never leaves a slide deck, and wants engineers who speak their minds, make decisions and ship. The retirement team's own account fits that picture: two engineers, a scrapped seven-year effort and a rebuild in weeks.

## What they have shipped

| Project | What it is | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [retire.opm.gov](https://ndstudio.gov/posts/automating-federal-retirements) | Online federal retirement application | Replaced paper intake for the retirement process. The team says it was on track for 100,000 digital applications by the end of 2025 |
| [TrumpRx.gov](https://trumprx.gov) | Drug price and coupon site | Launched 5 February 2026 with 43 drugs and passed 800 by June. It does not sell drugs. A studio engineer said the site passed half a billion requests by 6 February with no crashes |
| [America.gov](https://america.gov) | AI answers drawn from about 29,000 federal sites | Launched 29 September 2026 and run by GSA. Gebbia told CNBC it uses Google's Gemini and SpaceXAI's Grok. No login, and the privacy page says the AI providers keep no prompts |
| 250.gov | AI experience built with Freedom 250 | Launched 14 April 2026. The studio calls it the first AI experience on a government website, with history quizzes, trip planning and event search |
| [Trump Accounts](https://trumpaccounts.gov) | Site and official app for children's investment accounts | $1,000 from the Treasury for each child born from 2025 to 2028. CNBC reported about 3 million children signed up by 20 February |
| [Real Food](https://realfood.gov) | Site for the 2025 to 2030 Dietary Guidelines | A new food pyramid and a Super Bowl LX spot featuring Mike Tyson. The page says a Section 508 accessibility review is under way |
| [Genesis Mission](https://genesis.energy.gov) | Site for the Department of Energy's AI research initiative | Landing page for an administration priority, per Nextgov |
| [Tech Force](https://techforce.gov) and [NASA Force](https://nasaforce.gov) | Hiring sites built with OPM | Tech Force plans about 1,000 early-career technologists on two-year terms. NASA Force offers one to two year term appointments on lunar and aeronautics work |
| SafeDC.gov, americabydesign.gov, ndstudio.gov, trumpcard.gov | Campaign, mission and program pages | SafeDC supports the Washington law-enforcement surge, and TrumpCard.gov covers the Gold Card |
| CIO.gov beta | The federal CIO's site | The first production site on Cloudflare's vinext |
| [Rampart](https://ndstudio.gov/posts/say-hello-to-rampart) | Open-source on-device filter for personal information | 14.7 MB, 3.9 ms median in the browser, 98.4% recall on its own test set, alpha stage |
| [American Forge](https://forge.ndstudio.gov) | Six-month engineering residency | Run with the AI coding company Cognition |

America.gov runs on Google's [Gemini](/stories/gemini-4-argon-vs-muse-wonder-price-access-benchmarks) and SpaceXAI's Grok, and SpaceXAI is also where Cursor's team landed, as our [pstack story](/stories/pstack-cursor-plugin-poteto-mode-skills-playbooks) covers.

The retirement project shows the method. OPM had tried three modernization efforts over decades, at an estimated cost of $130 million, and a PowerApps rebuild was still unfinished. The two engineers scrapped it and rebuilt in weeks on standard web technology. They then found OPM's forgotten data warehouse, tested it against 500 processed cases, and matched every non-complex case to the penny. That result is what opened the way to what they call Instant retirement.

### Willing to try new tools

The studio is happy to try new tools when they add value. Cloudflare's February 2026 launch of vinext, an experimental, AI-built rewrite of Next.js (the React framework from Vercel) that deploys to Cloudflare Workers, named the studio as its first production user, on the CIO.gov beta. The studio shared the news on X, and Cloudflare [shipped vinext 1.0](https://blog.cloudflare.com/vinext) on 28 September 2026, calling it production-ready. CIO.gov is the only studio site confirmed on it. A developer's blog says other studio sites run Next.js on Cloudflare through OpenNext, a different adapter, which the studio has not confirmed.

## The impact

The evidence splits by who is speaking.

- Claimed by the studio or the White House: about 100,000 digital retirement applications by the end of 2025, and 500 test cases matching to the penny. Half a billion TrumpRx requests by 6 February with no crashes. More than $400 million saved through TrumpRx, a White House figure with no published data behind it. About 40 million daily visits to government sites, per Gebbia, and a goal of moving America.gov from answers to actions in 2027.
- Independent or third-party: the Congressional Research Service says uninsured patients and those buying outside coverage are most likely to save on TrumpRx. CNBC reported the roughly 3 million sign-ups for Trump Accounts, a Treasury figure. TrumpRx grew from 43 to more than 800 drugs in four months, and an NPR analysis found brand-name deals remain a small share of what the participating makers sell. No independent measure of the retirement system's processing times has surfaced.

### A new design standard

The studio's supporters point to the bar it is setting for American government websites. Its mission statement says the website is now the only government building most people enter, and argues it deserves the care marble lobbies once got: clear enough to finish on the first try, fast enough to do in one sitting and usable on a phone. The sites share a recognizable look, with bold type, American imagery such as the flag and the Capitol, and a "designed in D.C." signature, and the studio says it treats accessibility as a core design responsibility and not a compliance checkbox. Some design observers praised the visual work of the early sites, and others called the creation of a chief design officer a milestone for giving design formal standing in the White House. Architect Magazine framed the goal as rebuilding trust through better user experience.

## Criticism and open questions

Critics have raised practical points. NOTUS reported that three early sites failed an accessibility audit and that some landing pages were heavy downloads, though Nextgov noted the team has at times fixed problems after launch. The Guardian reported that four studio sites ran visitor-tracking software without the privacy filings the law requires, and that the software was removed after the paper asked questions, and it also raised questions about where the studio's spending is recorded and about its work on passport and voter-registration pages. The White House says the studio follows the law, and no authority has found a violation. Ars Technica observed that the early sites are mostly single-page launches.

Open questions remain. America.gov's safeguards for sensitive data once it handles transactions are not yet published, and the studio's three-year life ends in August 2028.

## Lessons for builders

- Start with the pages that carry the traffic. Ten sites reach half the country, and the studio began there.
- Pick a painful process you can measure. Gebbia says one task fell from 87 clicks to 12, and the retirement team targeted a six-month wait.
- Prove it on a small test before arguing. Five hundred cases matching to the penny persuaded skeptical administrators in a way a plan could not.
- Run like a startup inside the institution. The studio says it has little patience for bureaucracy and endless meetings, and its retirement team scrapped a seven-year effort for a weeks-long rebuild.
- Try new tools when they add value, and say plainly which stage they are at.
- Keep the stack boring. The retirement team used standard web tools and built its own permissions and feature flags when vendor tools were hard to get.
- Publish your engineering notes. The Dev Index posts and the open-source Rampart release recruit and build trust at once.
- Work with a mandate and a clock. The studio has air cover from the top, a first deadline of 4 July 2026 and a three-year life.
- Check accessibility and privacy as you ship. At government scale, those reviews matter as much as speed.

builtbynpcs.com is heavily inspired by the studio's small-team, ship-and-show-the-work approach.

## What to watch

- America.gov's move from answers to actions in 2027, and the Login.gov integration the order directs.
- Whether more studio sites move to vinext now that it is 1.0.
- The first American Forge cohort and what it ships.
- The studio's three-year sunset in August 2028.

:::sources
- [About](https://ndstudio.gov/about), [News](https://ndstudio.gov/news), [Dev Index](https://ndstudio.gov/posts) and the [home page](https://ndstudio.gov) at ndstudio.gov: mission, team, press, engineering posts and the selected-work list.
- [How We Automated Federal Retirements](https://ndstudio.gov/posts/automating-federal-retirements) and [Introducing Rampart](https://ndstudio.gov/posts/say-hello-to-rampart): the retirement project and the privacy filter.
- [American Forge](https://forge.ndstudio.gov), [Tech Force](https://techforce.gov), [NASA Force](https://nasaforce.gov), [Real Food](https://realfood.gov) and [Trump Accounts](https://trumpaccounts.gov): what each studio-built site says about itself, including the startup-inside-government description.
- [National Design Studio on X](https://x.com/ndstudio?lang=es): the 250.gov launch, the vinext post and the half-billion-requests repost.
- [Dezeen's interview with Gebbia](https://www.dezeen.com/2025/11/18/america-first-chief-design-officer-joe-gebbia-interview/) and [Reuters on the appointment](https://tech.yahoo.com/general/articles/trump-signs-executive-order-creating-193409509.html): origins, reporting line and the DOGE comparison.
- [Federal News Network on the studio](https://federalnewsnetwork.com/it-modernization/2026/01/national-design-studio-looks-to-overhaul-27000-federal-websites-and-is-hiring-a-team-to-do-it/) and [on America.gov](https://federalnewsnetwork.com/it-modernization/2026/09/how-the-trump-administration-has-been-building-toward-the-america-gov-launch/): the Recreation.gov origin and the America.gov launch.
- [Nextgov on America.gov](https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2026/09/white-house-launches-ai-powered-americagov-digital-front-door/416303/) and [Nextgov on the studio](https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2026/02/new-white-house-design-team-aims-delightful-websites-changing-design-ethos-process/411560/): launch details, former DOGE staff, the Genesis site, accessibility fixes after launch.
- [Security Boulevard](https://securityboulevard.com/2026/09/america-gov-explained-what-it-is-how-to-use-it-and-what-comes-next/): the Gemini and Grok models and the privacy page.
- [Congressional Research Service on TrumpRx](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF13281) and [Fox News on the June expansion](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-expands-trumprx-prescription-drug-discount-program-800-medications): drug counts, savings and the $400 million claim.
- [NOTUS](https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/silicon-valley-government-websites-national-design-studio), [Benton Institute's summary of the Guardian investigation](https://www.benton.org/headlines/redesign-us-government-websites-stokes-surveillance-fears), [NewsNetworks' copy of the Guardian piece](https://newsnetworks.com/it-s-dangerous-and-it-s-going-to-erode-trust-redesign-of-us-government-websites-stokes-surveillance-fears-291794.html) and [IBTimes](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/privacy-concerns-federal-websites-national-design-studio-1805920): accessibility findings, tracking software and the White House response.
- [Architect Magazine](https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/the-u-s-government-is-getting-a-full-design-makeover-and-it-starts-with-27000-websites/) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Design_Studio): the Arnell appointment, the click-count example, the trust framing, design observers' praise and the Ars Technica observation.
- [How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week (Cloudflare)](https://blog.cloudflare.com/vinext), [Cloudflare on X](https://x.com/Cloudflare/status/2104602173359149232), [Adyog's vinext 1.0 summary](https://pulse.adyog.com/insights/vinext-1-0-behavior-not-code-is-the-hard-part) and [a developer's OpenNext write-up](https://davidloor.com/en/blog/deploying-nextjs-cloudflare-opennext-guide): vinext, its 1.0 release and which studio sites use OpenNext.
- [First of Kind interview on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDsNVDKCb9I): the embedded video.
:::