| name | frontend-design-direction |
| description | Set a frontend design direction for production UI work. USE WHEN building or improving websites, dashboards, applications, components, landing pages, visual tools, or any web UI that needs stronger product-specific design judgment. |
| origin | community |
| cluster | frontend-web |
| version | 1.0.0 |
Frontend Design Direction
Use this skill when the work is not just making UI function, but making it feel
purposeful, polished, and appropriate to the product domain.
Note: this skill does not rebundle the canonical Anthropic frontend-design
skill. Install that from anthropics/skills when you want the official upstream
skill. This skill is the standalone design-direction layer that pairs with the
frontend-web cluster's React, Vue, and motion spokes.
When to Use
- The user asks to build a web page, app, dashboard, artifact, component, or UI.
- The user asks to make an interface more polished, distinctive, beautiful, or
less generic.
- The implementation needs visual hierarchy, typography, color, motion, layout,
and interaction choices.
- The current UI works but reads as flat, generic, templated, or mismatched to
the audience.
Design Direction
Before coding, choose a specific direction:
- Purpose: what job does the interface do?
- Audience: who repeats this workflow, and what do they need to scan first?
- Tone: utilitarian, editorial, playful, industrial, refined, technical,
maximal, minimal, dense, calm, or another explicit direction.
- Memorable detail: one design idea that makes the result feel intentional.
- Constraints: framework, accessibility, performance, responsiveness, and
existing design system.
Match the direction to the domain. A SaaS operations tool should usually be
dense, quiet, and scannable. A portfolio, launch page, game, or editorial piece
can be more expressive. Do not force a landing-page composition onto a tool that
needs repeated daily use.
Implementation Guidance
- Build the actual usable experience as the first screen unless the user
explicitly asks for marketing copy.
- Use existing project components, tokens, icon libraries, and routing patterns
before introducing a new visual system.
- Use real or generated visual assets when the interface depends on images,
products, places, people, gameplay, charts, or inspectable media.
- Prefer contextual typography and spacing over generic oversized hero text.
- Keep palettes multi-dimensional: avoid a UI dominated by one hue family.
- Use CSS variables or existing design tokens so the direction remains
coherent across states.
- Design responsive constraints explicitly: grids, aspect ratios, min/max
sizes, stable toolbars, and fixed-format controls should not shift when labels
or hover states appear.
- Use motion sparingly but deliberately. Prefer high-signal transitions that
clarify state over decorative animation.
- Verify text fit on mobile and desktop. Long labels must wrap or resize
cleanly rather than overflowing.
Anti-Patterns
- Do not default to common generated patterns: purple gradients, decorative
blobs, oversized cards, vague hero copy, or stock-like atmospheric media.
- Do not add UI cards inside other cards.
- Do not use a single decorative style everywhere when the domain calls for
restraint.
- Do not hide the primary product, tool, object, or workflow behind generic
marketing sections.
- Do not add a new dependency for a design flourish unless it clearly pays for
itself.
- Do not describe the UI's features inside the UI when the controls can speak
for themselves.
Review Checklist
- The first viewport immediately communicates the product, workflow, or object.
- The visual hierarchy supports scanning and repeated use.
- Typography fits the container and does not overlap adjacent content.
- Color choices have contrast and do not collapse into a one-note palette.
- Icons are used for familiar tool actions where available.
- Responsive layout has stable dimensions for boards, grids, toolbars,
controls, tiles, and counters.
- Assets render and carry the subject matter instead of acting as filler.
- Motion improves orientation and does not mask sluggishness.
- The result matches the repo's existing frontend conventions unless there is a
clear reason to depart.
