| name | deterministic-design |
| description | Render the UI and prove it's balanced + usable: a deterministic layout audit (centroid / optical-center / pixel-oracle balance via explicit math + annotated screenshot) plus a vision-judged Nielsen usability audit by a separate fresh-eyes judge. The measurement layer taste-only design skills lack. |
| risk | safe |
| source | community |
| source_type | community |
| source_repo | connerkward/deterministic-design-skill |
| date_added | 2026-06-16 |
| author | Conner K Ward |
| license | MIT |
| tags | ["design","layout","usability","audit","verification","vision"] |
| tools | ["claude-code","antigravity","cursor","gemini-cli","codex-cli"] |
When to Use
Use to catch AI-generated UI that "looks off", is misaligned or centered-mush, or fails usability — when you need to PROVE a layout is balanced and usable instead of trusting the model's eye. Compose it with any taste/token design skill before reporting design "done".
Source: connerkward/deterministic-design-skill (MIT).
deterministic-design
Thesis: determinism beats AI randomness. A model can't trust its own eye on layout — so
don't. Render the UI and measure it.
Two sub-skills (load as needed):
- design-spatial — deterministic layout audit: explicit grid
- 8-pt spacing, and
layout-audit.js computes centroid / optical-center / pixel-oracle
balance and draws an annotated screenshot. Numbers, not vibes. Plus a render-then-
critique vision loop.
- design-ux — usability audit: scores the rendered UI against
Nielsen's 10 + interaction heuristics via a SEPARATE fresh-eyes judge → prioritized fix list.
This improves existing design skills (including the default Anthropic one) by adding the
layer they lack — it doesn't just advise on taste, it renders, measures, and judges the
output. Composable with any design skill.
In central this lives as a subdir of ckw-design; it publishes separately as
deterministic-design-skill (its own distribution) via publish-skill. One of the two
flagship narratives — the determinism one; its sibling is human-in-the-loop (lookdev).
Limitations
- Layout metrics and vision-judged audits catch many spatial and usability failures, but they are not a substitute for product judgment or user testing.
- The workflow requires a rendered UI or screenshot; it cannot validate components that have not been built or captured.
- Automated scoring can miss brand nuance, copy tone, accessibility needs, and domain-specific user expectations.
