Design for cyclic loading is emerging as a key question for next generation power systems. Recent developments in techniques for cyclic stress analysis have significant implications for high temperature design. In the same way that limit load analysis is now being used to overcome the difficulties and guesswork of stress classification for steady primary loads, so shakedown and ratcheting analysis can eliminate the more difficult problems of stress classification for cyclic loads. The paper shows how reference stresses defined for shakedown and ratcheting provide rapid and conservative information for design against rupture and creep damage, deformation and strain accumulation, and ratcheting. These techniques will provide additional insights to designers and are likely to augment rather than replace, existing options. These ideas have existed in the research literature for some time, but have now become more accessible by the general industry with a new analysis technique in a commercial finite element code. Examples are given which demonstrate the methodology for nozzles having non-thermal secondary stresses, and prediction of long-term distortion in thermal shock problems.