uikit-expert-skill

name	uikit-expert-skill
description	Write, review, and modernize UIKit code for legacy-to-modern iOS apps (iOS 12+ through latest). Use when building UIKit screens, refactoring massive view controllers, optimizing table/collection rendering, improving animation/layout/state patterns, applying modern APIs with iOS 12-safe fallbacks, and planning incremental UIKit↔SwiftUI migration with measurable quality gates.

UIKit Expert Skill

Overview

Use this skill as the UIKit-specific counterpart to swiftui-expert-skill.

It is optimized for:

• legacy UIKit projects (including iOS 12 target support)
• mixed UIKit/SwiftUI migration contexts
• performance-sensitive list and card-heavy interfaces

Workflow Decision Tree

1) Review existing UIKit screen

• Validate lifecycle usage and ownership boundaries.
• Check layout correctness (safe area, constraints, self-sizing).
• Check update strategy (reloadData overuse, invalidation churn).
• Check rendering hotspots (shadow, blur, repeated measurement, image decode).
• Check accessibility and Dynamic Type behavior.

2) Refactor existing UIKit implementation

• Replace fragile layout hacks with anchor/inset-driven layout.
• Move broad updates to targeted row/item updates.
• Extract reusable view/cell components.
• Add async/state guards to prevent stale completion writes.
• Add availability-gated modern APIs with equivalent iOS 12 fallbacks.

3) Build new UIKit feature

• Define explicit state model and ownership.
• Build with Auto Layout anchors and safe area.
• Choose table/collection patterns with stable identity.
• Implement loading/error/success state rendering.
• Add focused animation and performance constraints from day one.