wireframe

name	wireframe
description	Produce low-fidelity black-and-white UI wireframes as SVGs or viewer pages. Use when asked to wireframe, sketch a screen, draft a layout, make a low-fi mockup, or publish wireframes.
key	paperclipai/bundled/product/wireframe
recommendedForRoles	["designer","product","engineer"]
tags	["design","wireframe","ux","prototyping","svg"]

Wireframe

Produce low-fidelity, black-and-white UI wireframes as standalone SVG files. The goal is to communicate structure — what goes where, in what order, at roughly what size — without committing to colour, brand, or polish.

When to use

Trigger on phrases like:

• "wireframe a [screen / page / flow] for X"
• "low-fi / lo-fi mockup of X"
• "draft a layout for X"
• "rough sketch of the [dashboard / settings / login / ...] page"
• "show me how X would lay out before I build it"

Skip and defer to frontend-design (or similar) when the request mentions: brand, polish, real components, "production-ready", colour palettes, hi-fi, Figma export, or actual code/HTML/React deliverables.

House style — non-negotiable

Wireframes are diagnostic, not decorative. Lock these tokens on every output:

Token	Value	Notes
Stroke	#000 width 1.5	All borders, dividers, outlines
Fill (boxes)	#fff	Default for cards/containers
Placeholder fill	#e6e6e6	Image/avatar/empty-state regions
Text colour	#000 for labels, #666 for placeholder text	No other colours
Accent	#d33 (dashed) — annotation layer ONLY	Never inside real UI elements
Font	font-family="-apple-system, system-ui, sans-serif"	Single typeface across the whole file
Type scale	12 caption · 14 body · 20 heading · 28 title	No other sizes
Grid	8px snap, 24px gutter	All x/y/w/h must be multiples of 8
Default canvas	1280×800 desktop, 375×812 mobile, 768×1024 tablet	Pick one and state it in the comment

If you need to highlight a specific region for a callout, use the annotation layer (red dashed). Never colourise the wireframe itself.

Workflow

1. Confirm scope. What screen(s)? Which viewport (desktop / tablet / mobile)? Single screen or multi-screen flow? If unclear, ask one question, then proceed with the most likely default.
2. Pick a canvas from the table above. State the viewport in your reply.
3. Compose from primitives. Read references/components.md and assemble the screen from the primitive snippets. Snap every coordinate to 8px.
4. Write the SVG to a file. Default path: wireframes/<slug>.svg in the working directory. Filename slug describes the screen (login.svg, dashboard.svg, settings-account.svg).
5. Emit a textual annotation list in your reply, mapping each numbered region in the SVG to a one-line description ("1 — primary nav, 2 — search input, 3 — list of recent items"). This makes the wireframe accessible, queryable, and reviewable in text-only channels.
6. For multi-screen flows, produce one SVG per screen and a summary flow.svg that arranges thumbnails left-to-right with arrows between them.

Quick start — minimal SVG

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="1280" height="800" viewBox="0 0 1280 800"
     font-family="-apple-system, system-ui, sans-serif" fill="#fff" stroke="#000" stroke-width="1.5">
  <!-- canvas border -->
  <rect x="0" y="0" width="1280" height="800" />

  <!-- example: a button -->
  <g transform="translate(48, 48)">
    <rect width="120" height="40" rx="4" />
    <text x="60" y="25" font-size="14" text-anchor="middle" stroke="none" fill="#000">Continue</text>
  </g>
</>

Two house-style gotchas worth memorising:

• Always set stroke="none" on <text> elements (text inherits the parent stroke and gets a halo otherwise).
• Always wrap text fill explicitly (fill="#000") since the parent group fill is #fff for boxes.

Primitive library

The full set of reusable primitives lives in references/components.md. Load it whenever you need a primitive whose exact markup you do not have in working memory. Do not re-derive primitives from scratch — copy the snippet and adjust coordinates.

Primitives provided:

• Inputs: button (filled, outlined, icon), text input, textarea, dropdown, checkbox, radio, toggle, search input
• Layout: card, section divider, sidebar, two-column, three-column
• Navigation: navbar, tab bar, breadcrumb, pagination, sidebar nav
• Content: heading, paragraph block, list row, table, key-value pair, metric tile
• Media: image placeholder, avatar (circle/square), video placeholder
• Overlay: modal, drawer, toast, tooltip, dropdown menu (open state)
• Annotation: numbered callout, dashed region highlight, arrow connector

Grid, palette, and type scale

For exact pixel values, palette tokens, and type sizes, see references/grid-system.md.

Worked examples

references/examples.md contains four complete wireframes you can copy and adapt:

1. Login screen (mobile, 375×812)
2. Admin dashboard (desktop, 1280×800)
3. Settings page with form (desktop, 1280×800)
4. Modal confirmation overlay (desktop, 1280×800)

When the user's request is close to one of these, start from the example and modify, rather than building from blank.

Output convention

Every wireframe response should include:

1. The SVG file written to disk (path stated explicitly).
2. The SVG inlined in your reply (so it renders in markdown previews).
3. A short numbered annotation list mapping regions to intent.
4. Any explicit assumption you made (viewport, signed-in state, empty/populated, dark/light not applicable since monochrome).

If the user requests a website / viewer page

Trigger on phrases like "make a page that shows the screens", "single page I can scroll", "build a viewer", "let me click through the wireframes", "show them all on one page", or any request to bundle multiple wireframes into a browsable artifact (not a production site).

Build one static index.html that loads the SVG wireframes directly. Do not turn this into a React app or component library — it's a review surface, not product UI.

File layout (default):

design/<task-slug>/
  index.html
  wireframes/    # the SVGs from this skill
  screenshots/   # any reference screenshots

Page anatomy (start from assets/site-template.html and adjust — do not re-derive the CSS):

• Sticky sidebar TOC (240px on desktop) listing every screen with anchor links. Group by Flow / Screens / Open questions.
• Hero header at the top: crumb (issue id), title, one-paragraph summary, pill row of meta tags (12 screens, Lo-fi · monochrome, Click any wireframe to zoom).
• One section per screen with a 2-column grid: wireframe on the left, reference image + numbered annotations + a "Why this changes" callout on the right. The wireframe <img> points to the SVG file directly — do not inline it.
• Click-to-zoom lightbox for any element marked [data-zoom]. Esc and backdrop click both close.
• Flow diagram section near the top that loads wireframes/flow.svg full-width.
• Open questions section at the bottom for unresolved decisions.

House style for the viewer (matches the wireframes themselves):

• Palette: --bg: #fafaf8, --panel: #fff, --ink: #111, --muted: #666, --line: #e5e5e0, --accent: #d33 (red dashed callouts only).
• System font stack only: -apple-system, system-ui, "Segoe UI", sans-serif. No web fonts.
• 8px-based spacing, border-radius: 8px on cards, 1px --line borders, no shadows except the hover lift on .wire.
• The viewer chrome is allowed to be slightly more polished than the wireframes (subtle hover, rounded cards) — but never colourful. The wireframes themselves stay strictly monochrome.

Responsive (verify before reporting done):

• ≥980px: two-column grid, sidebar TOC visible.
• 900–980px: grid stacks to one column, TOC still sidebar.
• <900px (tablet/phone): TOC collapses to a sticky <details> disclosure at the top of the page, defaults closed; tapping a link auto-closes it. Sections get scroll-margin-top: 80px so anchor jumps clear the sticky bar.
• <560px (phone): tighter type/spacing scale, hero shrinks, lightbox switches from flex-centered to block layout at full viewport width with touch-action: pinch-zoom so users can pinch in further.

Verification before handing off: open the file in a browser and walk it at 1440×900, 768×1024, and 390×844. Confirm anchor jumps land cleanly, lightbox opens/closes, and SVGs render at the right aspect.

If the user asks to deploy / publish / host the wireframes

Defer to the here-now skill — it owns publishing, anonymous vs. permanent sites, claim tokens, and credentials. Do not roll your own hosting.

Load the here-now skill and follow its publish.sh recipe. The shape is:

cd design/<task-slug>
{path-to-here-now}/scripts/publish.sh .
# → https://{adjective-noun-suffix}.here.now/

If here-now isn't installed for the current agent, install it (npx skills add heredotnow/skill --skill here-now -g) or escalate to whoever owns the agent's skill set. Do not roll your own hosting.

Things to remember when invoking it:

• Publish the directory containing index.html at its root, not the parent. index.html must be at the root of the published tree.
• Without saved credentials the site is anonymous and expires in 24 hours. With a saved API key, it's permanent. If the user wants a permanent URL, follow the here-now skill's sign-in-code flow — don't fake your way around it.
• For an update, pass --slug {existing-slug} so the URL stays stable across review rounds (the script auto-loads the claim token from .herenow/state.json).
• Read publish_result.* lines from script stderr to determine auth_mode and the claim URL — do not read .herenow/state.json and present its contents as the source of truth.
• Always share the siteUrl from the current run; if anonymous, also share the claim URL and the 24h expiry warning.

What this skill is NOT for

• Production UI code — use frontend-design or write React/HTML directly.
• Hi-fi or branded mockups — use Figma or a design tool, not this.
• Interactive prototypes — SVG is static; export multi-screen flows as a flow.svg.
• Diagrams of system architecture, sequence flows, or data models — use mermaid or plantuml.
• Illustrations or art — use example-skills:canvas-design or algorithmic-art.

Bundled assets

• assets/template.svg — blank desktop canvas with hidden 8px-grid guides; copy as a starting point.
• assets/template-mobile.svg — same for 375×812 mobile.
• assets/site-template.html — minimal review-viewer page (sticky TOC + responsive collapse + lightbox). Copy to design/<task-slug>/index.html and fill in the sections when the user requests a website.